Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists and Other Criminal Think (Howdunit)

Rating:
Summary: A useful introduction and reference for writers.
Review: "Malicious Intent" is one of the best writers guides to how murderers and other violent criminals think. The author approaches his material with a mind/personality/psychology/human behavior perspective. The book's coverage is broad, including history, profiling, serial murder, cult murder, and sexual predators; it looks at the role played by victims and drug abuse. Sean Mactire's background in the prevention of child abuse shows up in his detailed treatment of child molesters and murders.

Mactire's chapters on serial murder and on terrorists are especially usable.

While all books I have read in the "Howdunit Series" have been helpful, "Malicious Intent" has been the most useful. My copy has so many Post-It Flags marking material and references it looks like a porcupine.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book was just disappointing and irritating on many levels. I don't consider myself to be an expert on crime, but I do consider myself to be well-read. The author takes the most common ideas about criminals and lays them out as fact. He doesn't support almost any of it with any kind of statistic or study, and also doesn't offer that there could be other factors or differing opinions of why these crimes occur. Supporting evidence is sorely lacking.

His psychological explanations really grated on my nerves. Anyone who had studied psychology knows there are a wide range of divisions of psychology. He takes one position in psychology and preaches it as the only interpretation. Admittedly, most individuals in psychology take one position and exclude the others, but it doesn't give you a completely accurate view of the events you're analyzing if you refuse to allow for other view. It was grating to read, and I had a hard time making my way through the book.

Some of the examples are poorly supported and explained OR are still under debate as to real criminals who committed the crime. As someone who has read about a some of the crimes listed, I found that this author has omitted theories, has omitted facts and just ran with the most popular theory, regardless of facts.

The only thing I did appreciate was the opening of the history of these types of criminals. However, even then I was disappointed with the lack of background info and the brevity of the history of these types of crimes.

I'm hesitant to recommend this book for beginners simply because it is such a narrow view of the possibilities, of the facts and is just lacking in anything helpful. Almost everything listed in the book I already had read about or studied.

Spend your money and time elsewhere. You'll be better served if you do.

Rating:
Summary: Bleah.
Review: This was terrible. I don't know a lot about crime and psychology, but I do know about Wicca, and the author (even though he praises it) doesn't know what he's talking about; it's clear he got all his info from the one Craft book in his bibliography. His mention of Wicca is about as insulting and innaccurate as saying, "Christianity is about people who worship a dead guy nailed to a stick. They believe the Earth is flat, they have a Pope, and they celebrate a season called Passover."

With this kind of BS in the part I do know about, I don't have much faith in the rest of it. And the heavy-handed opinionated text was utterly out-of-line in what is supposed to be a reference book. Shame on Howdunit for letting this pile of junk get published.

Sure, this isn't meant to be a book about religion, but if the guy can't be bothered to check his facts on one thing, what good is it as a reference if I have to double-check everything else he says for similar errors? I'd no more use this book than I'd use a dictionary that had defined Anteater as "a kind of fish."