Psychopaths: Up Close and Personal: Inside the Minds of Sociopaths, Serial Killers and Deranged Murderers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

Peek Inside the Minds of the Most Disturbing Murderers
What makes a cold, heartless murderer tick? In this book, investigative criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee takes readers through the acts of some of the most dangerous people who once walked among us. Then he digs deeper. Using the killers' own words, he reveals their twisted psyches. After spending years researching, interviewing and corresponding with imprisoned criminals, he paints a picture of how narcissism, jealousy, and sociopathy can make people commit horrifying and violent acts without remorse.

Highlighting some of the most infamous serial killers in history, as well as recently convicted murderers, this books explores the cases and psychopathies of murderers, including:

Oscar Pistorius, Olympic Murderer
Kenneth Alessio Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler
Harold Shipman, Dr. Death
Kenneth Allen McDuff, the Broomstick Killer
Melanie McGuire, the Suitcase Murder

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Psychology, Crime

445 pages, Paperback

Published January 15, 2018

About the author

Chris was a former Royal Marine intelligence officer. He is now a criminologist who has interviewed over 30 serial killers.

Reviews

[Ryley Balon · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Conext: I bought the paperback book, and the book only had 237 pages, not the 300 plus Amazon has or the 400 plus the Goodread has. All 3 have the same ISBN numbers, though.)

I picked this book up years ago from a brick and mortar book store because of my on and off again interest in true crime. What took me so long to read the book (a few years) was because of that, not the content.

This book is not exactly what you would expect in a true crime book. While, in most cases, it does talk about the brutality that got them convicted, it talks more about motive behind and surrounding events. There is a very large number of people in this book that the author writes about that I have never heard of before, which I liked. I'm so sick of hearing about the same people again and again. There is also more than just one type of case file.

[Alissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very interesting, but also very upsetting. How do we keep ourselves and our children safe when there are people out there that have no empathy, no remorse. Like the author stated not all psychopaths become killers, but they probably still do damage in their own way. The author seemed to really want to connect to his readers. He seems very down to earth. His writing is a little bit all over the place, but full of good content. One mistake I noticed was that he referred to Reeva's mother as Sheila, but her name is June.

[Tracy Schillemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book examines the minds of several notorious serial killers. It was interesting hearing how the killers psychology developed. I'm interested to read some of the books mentioned in this one.