The Monsters We Make

Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling

By: Rachel Corbett

Narrated by: Rachel Corbett

A riveting work of true crime that tells the strange story of criminal profiling from Victorian times to our own.

Criminal profiling—the delicate art of collecting and deciphering the psychological “fingerprints” of the monsters among us—holds an almost mythological status in pop culture. But what exactly is it, does it work, and why is the American public so entranced by it? What do we gain, and endanger, from studying why people commit murder? In The Monsters We Make, author Rachel Corbett explores how criminal profiling became one of society’s most seductive and quixotic undertakings through five significant moments in its history.

Corbett follows Arthur Conan Doyle through the London alleyways where Jack the Ripper butchered his victims, depicts the tailgate outside of Ted Bundy’s execution, and visits the remote Montana cabin where Ted Kaczynski assembled his antiestablishment bombs. Along the way emerge the people who studied and unraveled these cases. We meet self-taught psychologist Henry Murray, who profiled Adolf Hitler at the request of the U.S. government and later profiled his own students—including the future Unabomber—by subjecting them to cruel humiliation experiments. We also meet the prominent Yale psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis, who ended up testifying that Bundy was too sick to stand trial. Finally, Corbett takes the story into our own time, explaining the rise of modern “predictive policing” policies through a study of one Florida family that the analytics targeted—to devastating effects.

With narrative intrigue and deft research, Corbett delves deep into the mythology and reality of criminal profilers, revealing how thin the line can be separating those who do harm and those who claim to stop it.

“Corbett [is] a gifted storyteller … A highly readable, endlessly revealing primer on the homicidal mind.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

©2025 Rachel Corbett (P)2025 Recorded Books

Unfortunate

Unfortunately basic factual errors, poor source notes and the truly egregious inclusion of Dr. Dorothy Lewis without acknowledging the extensive controversy over her credibility and performance as an expert witness make this book unreadable and untrustworthy. I would very much love to read an actual analysis of criminal profiling that ruthlessly examines its history as a tool of law enforcement and how it can be abused but this book only perpetuates the abuse of physiological analysis in relation to extreme violence.

Criminal Profiling, Science or Not

Enter the world of criminal profiling, with some interesting cases. The author takes us on a journey of crime, the beginnings of criminal profiling, and the ups and downs of the science.

This was a really interesting read, and I enjoyed the deep dive into the cases that were presented. From Jack to the Ripper to some more recent cases, the science and how it was applied, and sometimes misapplied was very cool. This is one book that true crime fans will enjoy.