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Title: Murder for profit by William Bolitho ISBN: 0-910395-03-9 Publisher: Marlboro Press Pub. Date: 1982 Format: Paperback

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: The world's first profiler?
Comment: William Bolitho, Murder for Profit (Time, 1926)

South African expatriate William Bolitho (a pen name for a chap named Charles Ryall) wrote Murder for Profit in the mid-twenties, looking at the antics of five at-the-time notorious murderers (most of whom, save Werewolf of Hanover Fritz Haarmann, have now pretty much faded into obscurity). He was a journalist, a regular contributor to the Manchester Guardian and New York World at the time, and fleshed out some of his articles to compile the book. Were it just a look at cases of murder, it would probably have faded into well-deserved obscurity now (like Bolitho's previous book, Studies in Murder, has). But Murder for Profit is something different, and something that should be recognized-to my knowledge, it is the first book ever written which consciously attempts to profile the serial killer. As profiling of serial killers is held in high regard these days, it would seem to me that however inaccurate and colored Bolitho's conclusions, that he put people on the road should be enough to immortalize his name in the annals of crime literature forever.

Bolitho looks at the Burke and Hare murders (would-be grave robbers who decided murder was easier than digging), J. B. Troppmann (who killed for no other reason, Bolitho would have us believe, than that he found a victim from the same town he grew up in), G. J. Smith (the Brides in the Bath Murderer), Desire Landru (The Ladykiller), and Fritz Haarmann (the Werewolf of Hanover). The cases are presented in varying formats, which can get annoying at times (Landru's murders, for example, receive not an inch of the book), but does keep the interest better than a case-study template covering five serial killers would. Bolitho focuses more on the upbringings and lives of the murderers before they committed their crimes, for the most part, in an attempt to determine what forces shape the serial killer. Some of what he finds would fit today's profile (enmity towards their fathers, for example), while some would be laughed at (all were dealers in secondhand goods, in various ways).

But whether a book is important is, in the general scheme of things, not going to impress the casual reader all that much; the question to be asked is how's it read? And Murder for Profit reads very well for a book from the pre-television (read: back when people still had attention spans greater than those of a gerbil on crack) days. Bolitho hooks the interest, spends a good, but not inordinate, amount of time on each case, and saves his own conclusions for the section where he talks extensively about the serial killer profile. (Oddly, this is not at the end-it is at the beginning of the section on Haarmann.)

One wonders what Bolitho would write today, had he not died an untimely death, about our own serial killers. Lord knows he'd do a better job than most who write about them at present. This is a fascinating read, well worth taking the time to track down. *** ½