Hearts of Darkness
Serial Killers, the Behavioral Science Unit, and My Life as a Woman in the FBI
-
- £3.99
-
- £3.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Mindhunter, Criminal Minds, and My Favorite Murder, a riveting memoir of a trailblazing woman's life hunting down serial killers as one of the first female profilers of the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit and the real-life model for Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs.
'Jana Monroe is the single most influential woman to ever serve in the FBI.' -Joe Navarro, bestselling author of What Every BODY Is Saying
The gripping true account of one woman's encounters with some of the darkest criminal minds in history.
Jana Monroe was no ordinary cop: over the course of her career she consulted on more than 850 homicide cases. Through her work, she crossed paths with Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Edmund Kemper, Aileen Wuornos, and hundreds of other murderers.
Over the course of an utterly astonishing career in law enforcement and intelligence analysis, Monroe has come face-to-face with hundreds of the darkest criminals in American history. Her notoriety even led her to become the person whom the character of Clarice (Jodie Foster) in The Silence of the Lambs was modelled, and she even trained Foster for the role.
Hearts of Darkness is Monroe's incredible story, stepping out from the shadows to tell a range of gripping, sometimes gruesome, and always remarkable tales from the top moments of a life fighting the evil among us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this fascinating debut, Monroe shares how she rose in the FBI's ranks and became the inspiration for the character of Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. Ever since she was a child in 1960s Long Beach, Calif., Monroe longed to work in law enforcement, but as a petite blonde, the road wasn't easy: she lacked role models ("I would have done better to search for Amelia Earhart's remains") and chafed against the old boys' club atmosphere of police departments. When she scored an interview with the FBI in the 1980s after growing dissatisfied with her policing assignments in Southern California, she was called into a "special joint interview" with her then husband to "make sure he supported" her ambitions. He didn't, and attempted to dissuade Monroe from joining, but she divorced him and took the job. The stories Monroe shares of her 22 years in the FBI are thrilling, frightening, and occasionally amusing (like the time she and a colleague went charging into a hotel room to arrest a suspect at the same time—and got stuck in the doorway). In sharp, no-nonsense prose, Monroe describes delving into the psyches of such killers as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and finding love with a fellow agent, with whom she survived the 1992 FBI siege at Ruby Ridge. Readers interested in criminology will devour this.