Fifteen years or more ago, I began to consider I might try my hand at writing a contemporary murder mystery. In reading Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven Per-cent Solution, Freud explained to Holmes, “I’m a detective of the mind.” That summary explanation rang a bell for me. That’s what I do. That’s what any good forensic psychologist does: he or she tries to use scientific methods to “detect” and explain, as accurately and reliably as possible, why people do what they do.
The stories underlying the cases in which I have been privile more...