The Killer's Shadow by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

 Started: 10/31/20

Finished: 11/7/20

Year: 2020

Pages: 292

Genre: True Crime

Grade: B

Type: Trade Paperback

Reason for reading: review for MyShelf.com

Blurb (from back cover): "In the fall of 1980, John Douglas-the legendary FBI profile then in the early years of his career-was called in to the manhunt for a white supremacist serial killer. A highly mobile and experienced sniper, the fugitive Joseph Paul Franklin was suspected of racially motivated murders around the country. Not only was he capable of taking even more innocent lives, there was also a fear that he would target President Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential campaign. With the clock ticking, Douglas meticulously dissected the killer's psychology, but despite Franklin's ultimate apprehension, what began as fugitive profile would become one of Douglas's most disturbing and lingering cases.

"In The Killer's Shadow, Douglas, with his longtime collaborator Mark Olshaker, details the highly coordinated pursuit of Franklin and Douglas's eventual prison confrontation with him. Recounting the methodical detective work that led to Franklin's capture, Douglas reveals how the case helped prove the power of criminal profiling at a moment when the stakes couldn't have been higher. Years later, after Franklin's conviction and subsequent confessions while in federal prison to a horrific array of other murders, Douglas sat across from Franklin for the first time to complete the profile and understand what motivated his terrifying evolution from hate speech to racially and religiously inspired killing The end result is a Mindhunter case as chilling and relevant today as it was forty years ago, one that goes inside the vicious cycle of far-right extremism and shows that to emerge from it shadow of hate, we must first understand its origin."

Opinion: This is a true crime story told differently than most others. This looks more at how Franklin came to be who he was instead of focusing on the details of his crimes.  I would recommend for any true crime or forensic psychology fan. A more complete review will be up on MyShelf.com in the upcoming months.