Hearts of Darkness: Serial Killers, the Behavioral Science Unit, and My Life as a Woman in the FBI

In this fascinating debut, Monroe shares how she rose in the FBI’s ranks and became the inspiration for the character of Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. Ever since she was a child in 1960s Long Beach, Calif., Monroe longed to work in law enforcement, but as a petite blonde, the road wasn’t easy: she lacked role models (“I would have done better to search for Amelia Earhart’s remains”) and chafed against the old boys’ club atmosphere of police departments. When she scored an interview with the FBI in the 1980s after growing dissatisfied with her policing assignments in Southern California, she was called into a “special joint interview” with her then husband to “make sure he supported” her ambitions. He didn’t, and attempted to dissuade Monroe from joining, but she divorced him and took the job. The stories Monroe shares of her 22 years in the FBI are thrilling, frightening, and occasionally amusing (like the time she and a colleague went charging into a hotel room to arrest a suspect at the same time—and got stuck in the doorway). In sharp, no-nonsense prose, Monroe describes delving into the psyches of such killers as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and finding love with a fellow agent, with whom she survived the 1992 FBI siege at Ruby Ridge. Readers interested in criminology will devour this. Agent: Steve Ross, Steve Ross Agency. (Oct.)