Jigsaw Man – Paul Britton Criminal Psychologist
Winner of Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Book Award
Aug 26, 2009
The Jigsaw Man is an astonishing read by Britain’s foremost criminal psychologist Paul Britton. Britton has opened up many of the intrigues and horrors he’s faced over his years of assisting the police all across the UK to narrow down their search for some of the most violent of criminals.
Forensic psychologist, Britton has worked on some of the UK’s most harrowing crimes over the last three decades. He was often consulted when the police just didn’t know where to start tracking down who was responsible for vicious crimes.
Britton worked by day for the NHS working with patients with a wide range of psychological problems when the murder of a young girl took place in the grounds of his workplace a police incident room was set up within the hospital, that started him pondering on the who and why of the crime.
The following year a phone call came to ask for his help to find a violent murderer and Britton spent many of his spare hours working on the case to produce a profile of the likely offender.
Questions of a Criminal Profiler
By working almost backwards, using his years of experience he begins by asking himself four questions
- What has happened
- Who is the victim
- How was is done
- Why was it done
Britton says that when those four puzzles have been solved he can address the fifth question of Who is responsible.
This book is a fascinating read to those who enjoy the workings of the human mind but it is not for the weak-hearted as some of the crimes go into horrific and explicit details.
Britton searches for traces of the workings of the mind left by the assailant and therefore helping him build up a picture of the age and personality traits of the offender.
It’s riveting stuff with some of the famous headline cases and lots of details that show most of the offenders as having psychotic defects or anti-social personality disorders which in his experience show that sooner or later these patterns of behaviour become more serious and often more frequent.
Psycological Profiling
Since his first case of helping the police profiling has become far more accepted and Britton helped in many ways to open up this avenue of looking not just at the physical evidence the criminal leaves behind but the psychological clues of the nature of the offender.
Fascinating, horrifying and a great read by a brave man who counsels the victims and seeks to put away those who offend.
Price at $8.50 ISBN 0-552-14493-2, published by Corgi in 1998
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