There’s a great public interest currently, in true crime and in the psychology of the serial killer, with a proliferation in TV programmes such as Mindhunter, the Smiley Face killers, Catching a killer and podcasts like Serial. Sky have recently launched a True Crime specific channel so they must anticipate this is a fascination that’s not going to go away anytime soon. There’s also a greater awareness of mental health issues. This was highlighted at my workplace recently and in a series of posters, my favourite was a thought provoking straight line with a line intersecting it about a quarter of the way long. It read ‘people’s lives’ along the whole line and ‘what you know about them ‘ along the quarter section.

So, it’s was an ideal time when this months second book review dropped through the letter box.  It’s The Dark Side of the Mind by Kerry Daynes published  by Endeavour, an imprint of Octopus ( http://www.octopusbooks.co.uk ), on the 20th February.

The book is a collection of true stories from Kerry Daynes’ life as a forensic psychologist. Her job is to delve into the minds of convicted men and women to understand what lies behind their actions. The world of the forensic psychologist can be highly unpredictable- the people you meet are rarely as they first appear. Kerry Daynes has seen it all. Her work has taken her from police interview rooms and the witness box to the cells of maximum-security prisons and the wards of secure hospital. In this memoir she gives us an unforgettable insight into the darker side of the mind.

This was a really interesting and thought provoking read. Kerry Daynes takes us through the story of her professional career in steps with dark humour and a certain amount of introspection. You feel like this was a learning experience for her as much as for the reader. Each chapter focuses on the case of one individual, as well as changes in Kerry’s career path and methodology. She explores the  psychological reasons behind a patient’s actions, with sensitivity and considered reflection regarding her own responses and treatment methods, as well as exposing outdated practices, lazy thinking, the results of cost cutting in mental health services and well-intentioned if unhelpful, one size fits all programmes  in the health and penal service.

There was no showboating here. This was not a bid for fame but a humanizing of those as we think of as ‘other’ than the rest of us ‘normal’ people and explanations of how treatments are developed. We learnt about her own difficulties with a stalker , stress related health issues and feelings of being burnt out when involved in assessing paedophile activities as part of Operation Yewtree, the investigation into child abuse by Jimmy Saville and other TV personalities. This then peaked when she was asked the make an assessment of Mark Bridger, the Welshman who murdered April Jones. Not able to suppress feelings of anger and revulsion for this man , Kerry moved away from criminal forensic psychology for her own mental health and this admission in the book makes her seem more normal , decent and likable than any protestations professional detachment could have done.

I loved the humour in the book. Being from the north midlands of England myself, it made her very real to me as a person. Vets and doctors use a black sense of humour to help them survive the stresses and depressing moments of they work and to me. We also talk about wildly inappropriate things over dinner.

Kerry Daynes (Cheshire Life)

This is English author Kerry Daynes’s ( http://www.kerrydaynes.online )  first book, she has over twenty years experience in the field of Psychology and is the person TV networks and news outlets turn to for expert commentary. Recently she helped SKY TV launch their Crime channel in late 2019 and is the “Profiler” in the award winning ‘Faking It’ series on Quest Red. As well as that Daynes’s speaks as an advocate for better conversations around crime, justice and mental health. She is patron of the National Centre for Domestic Violence and as a victim of stalking herself, acts as a spokeswoman for the Suzy Lampugh Trust’s stalking related campaigns.

This is not a read for those looking for gory details or rubber necking style voyeurism but an insightful and engaging foray into the minds of criminals and how they are not so different from us. Take my advice and get down to your bookshop or download a copy to get your brain whirring .

Reviewed by: Georgina Murphy

This book is part of a Random Things Blog tour, to see what the other reviewers thought visit their blogs listed below. Then if you get a copy and read it, comeback and tell us what you though, we’d love the feed back.