Post #55 – Women’s Memoirs, Book Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
When we review women’s memoirs on this website, we look for stories well written, but we are also on the lookout for memoirs that illustrate different aspects of memoir writing. Today’s memoir review focuses on The Profiler, a book that hinges on Pat Brown’s life turning point.
The story begins in 1990, when a woman is strangled near the author’s home. Brown almost immediately suspects their new boarder, although she hesitates to act on her feelings. When she took her suspicions as well as evidence (discovered in the boarder’s room) to the police, she is politely listened to and then sent home. They think of her as “a housewife with an overactive imagination.” Her husband accepts the opinion of the police, reminding his wife that they are the professionals.
This experience becomes a major turning point for Brown. Already an interpreter for the deaf in hospital and police settings, Brown begins to investigate the skills needed to become a profiler. At that time, there were few courses and no official educational program she could take to become a certified profiler outside the FBI. She felt she was too old to join the FBI and wait through years, perhaps decades of assignments before she would become eligible for profiler training. Therefore, she began a journey seeking to develop the necessary knowledge and experience needed to successful profile criminals, especially within her special area of interest — serial killers and psychopaths.
Now, 20 years after her initial concern with a possible serial killer living under her roof, Brown has developed the first accredited Criminal Profiling and Investigative Analysis program at Excelsior College and has her own agency.
Brown struggled through years of non-support from her husband and of self-doubt. But she continued to move forward with more investigations into the behavior of her ex-boarder (she did not want him under her roof once she acknowledged her suspicions about him and made her husband ask the boarder to leave). Finally, six years after her first visit to the police department, her boarder was brought in by the police for questioning.
If you want a good read of how an unexpected life event can reshape your career and even your relationship with your husband, then this book is for you.
