The best forensic books that are a little gruesome, but fascinating

"What kind of person could have done such a thing?" That was the question Douglas and his fellow FBI agents and crime-scene analysts tried to answer when developing criminal-personality profiles for the Behavioral Science Unit.

This book pulls the reader into prison interview rooms as he talks to infamous serial killers like Ed Kemper, Richard Speck, and David Berkowitz and conferences with detectives working on cases like the Trailside Killer in San Fransisco and the Atlanta child murders. It also reveals Douglas' story, from his early life in New York, his military service, and his career with the FBI.

You should read this book even if you've seen the TV version. The series is fictionalized and doesn't fully depict Douglas or his accomplishments. 

Before the creation of internet tools like NCIS and VICAP, catching serial killers was formidable. These monsters frequently crossed state lines, and law enforcement agencies couldn't—or wouldn't—share information. John Douglas provided them with a way to "picture" a perpetrator and connect him to the crime scene. 

He's one of my heroes.

Harris attended some of John Douglas' classes at the FBI Academy, which significantly impacted his writing and crime fiction in general.

He modeled Jack Crawford, the head of the Behavioral Science Unit in three of his novels, after Douglas. This one is his best. It incorporates many of the forensic tools law enforcement agencies possess, like profiling, psychology, and entomology, to bring violent offenders to justice.

It also features a young female graduate of the FBI Academy who serves as our "guide" throughout the investigation of a serial killer who has abducted the daughter of a U.S. Senator.

Clarice Starling's interactions with Hannibal Lector, a former forensic psychiatrist convicted of several murders himself, are some of the most chilling sections of the book. And although John Douglas didn't like the Jack Crawford character, I think he probably saw himself in Clarice.

I'm a big fan of reading a book before seeing the movie version, but if you missed that boat, no problem. You'll still get a lot—maybe more—from Harris' book.

To date, no movie or TV show has been made from Hayes' novel, but I'd drop everything if that happened.

Don't let its length—624 pages—keep you from reading it. It'll be over too soon. The protagonist, Scott Murdoch, is a former member of The Division, a U.S. agency that investigates wrongdoing by other intelligence agencies. After leaving the Division, Murdoch, using a pseudonym, wrote a forensic investigative handbook that has made him a law enforcement superstar.

He's drawn into the investigation of a murdered woman, dismembered and put into an acid bath in a Brooklyn hotel, by Ben Bradley, an NYPD homicide detective. A snippet from Murdoch's book has been found flushed down the toilet.

And that's just the beginning. The rest involves a murdered billionaire in Turkey and a Saudi Arabian doctor called the Saracen, who's bent on revenging the execution of his father by creating and releasing a fool-proof way to infect most of the U.S. with smallpox.

But the forensic techniques employed by Bradley's team, then Murdorch and the Division's other assets, make this book stand out among espionage novels. A process that reveals unseen detail in a mirror in the room where the billionaire dies is dazzling. 

Murdoch's unrelenting courage and determination to fulfill his mission thrust the reader into a harrowing journey that would overwhelm a team of Navy Seals.     

I've never read a book quite like this. It was a little challenging to get into, but by the time I finished, I was blown away by the author's talent.

The character-driven plot makes whiplash-inducing twists and turns from several points of view. The reader is first drawn into the mind of a comatose patient who is slowly regaining consciousness and thinks he sees his roommate being murdered.

Next, we're following Patrick Fort, a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome, who has won a disability scholarship to study anatomy at Cardiff University. Patrick has spent the last ten years fixated on finding out what happened to his father, the victim of a hit-and-run driver.

His habit of bringing home dead animals and examining them alarms his mother but is the foundation for his later expertise in biology, particularly in dissection. At university, he and his team are given a human cadaver and instructed to discover its cause of death. 

Through other perspectives, like Patrick's mother, his friend Lexi, a nurse at the hospital, and the doctor overseeing the anatomy class, the narrative lurches toward a conclusion that most readers won't see coming. It also asks some big questions about the nature of consciousness, dying, love, and compassion. 

And now for something completely different, set in the People's Republic of Laos in 1976.

Dr. Siri Paiboun, a former surgeon and socialist activist now old and disillusioned with the Communist Party, has become the country's only coroner. It's a job he hates, made worse by corrupt officials and a judge who tries to turn even blatant homicides into deaths from natural causes. And by the dead, who haunt his dreams. 

Aided only by his Thai nurse, Dtui, and his mentally-challenged morgue attendant, Geung, Siri must deal with the bodies of three men who weren't supposed to be found and the suspicious death of a senior official's wife. Both are political tightropes. As he teeters on them, Siri travels to an unfamiliar area where the people know him—but as the reincarnation of Yeh Ming, an ancient shaman.

Soon, he's having hallucinations that may, in fact, be very real. To save his own skin and solve all the riddles he encounters, Siri has to confront both the living and the dead.  

The magic realism, juxtaposed with the narrative's cynicism and amusing, ironic tone, make this book a delight.