HEARTS OF DARKNESS

A memoir from one of the first female profilers in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit.

As a child, Monroe idolized Dirty Harry, and after majoring in criminology in college, she became a probation officer and then a police officer in Southern California. In 1985, her decision to apply to the FBI ended her first marriage, to a man who mistakenly thought that Monroe’s “feminist determination to succeed in law enforcement would yield over time to a woman’s natural desire to bear children and mother them above all else.” When she began her training at Quantico, she met a fellow agent who would become her “second and permanent husband.” While posted in Tampa, she went undercover as an aerobics instructor to investigate some “New York Mafia types,” and one case, a triple homicide, affected her deeply. Consequently, she joined the Behavioral Science Unit, “one of the Bureau’s truly elite units,” focused on serial homicide. BSU, housed in a “dismal subterranean” office at Quantico, was immortalized in The Silence of the Lambs, and Monroe coached Jodie Foster for her role as Clarice Starling. “Hannibal Lecters were our daily diet (no pun intended),” writes Monroe. “We saw echoes of him constantly—through in-person interviews we conducted, by studying their victims’ remains, and by poring over case studies of earlier serial killers to hone our understanding.” The author is clear about the determination it took to thrive in the “male-driven and male-defined world of the FBI.” She makes no bones about the challenges she faced, nor does she shy away from describing the “psychological toll” of the job. Refreshingly, Monroe injects some humor amid the descriptions of pure evil. While the narrative occasionally drifts into hodgepodge territory, the author is an affable narrator, and her career accomplishments need no embellishment.

Fans of true crime will find much to enjoy in this absorbing chronicle of criminology.