Talent Development Resources...........detectives....,.portrayals in literature, film etc. - and professionals in real life

I joined the Bureau because I had always viewed them (since childhood) with admiration and I respected what they were doing. My father was an informant for Elliott Ness when he was a teenager in the Great Depression. ...  When I.. learned that women (even tiny ones) could be agents too, I jumped at the chance. ... I think that my background as a psychiatric nurse came in handy when I got into the profiling program. ...  I wasn't exactly one of the "original" female agents, but our ranks were only 4% when I joined in 1980. There were various forms of resistance to women in the FBI back then, some of it played out by academy instructors, some by supervisors in the field offices, and some by fellow agents.  It took different forms. Sometimes it was hard to take but mostly I just gravitated to those agents and supervisors who weren't so insecure in their own masculinity that they were threatened by "the gals." Candice DeLong ... [rebeccasreads.com interview] **Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines As a Woman in the FBI

She's a little hot-headed, and she doesn't hold back even when she should at times. But her story is exciting and inspirational because it dares women to go ahead and do what really matters to them. Jean Smart - about portraying former FBI Profiler DeLong in the Lifetime TV movie Killer Instinct:  From the Files of Agent Candice DeLong [premieres in October, 2003]  [quote from The Official Jean Smart e-Newsletter Sept 22, 2003] photo: Smart with co-star A Martinez

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Gil Grissom [played by William Petersen], the fictional version of an actual Las Vegas crime scene hobbyist-investigator in the hit CBS drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" [is] an intellectual nerd, a grown-up science geek who feels more comfortable around corpses than living people. Petersen loved the character so much, he committed to the show before a pilot was ever written.  "I'm interested in the why of crime, not so much the how," Petersen explains. "I wanted this to be a learning experience for me, because I really was never interested in science.

.. ..  "This was good for me. I figure a TV show might go three, four years. I said, 'How will I be able to do this?' It's got to be something I can learn from, something that attracts me somehow. There are parts I can do in my sleep. Closing arguments in court.  "A cop up against the wall. This guy is an enigma. He's really quite brilliant."  ... [Variety, June 6, 2001]

*related pages:***giftedness: characteristics***personal qualities*** acting

**related book:**The Forensic Science of C.S.I.  by Katherine M. Ramsland

 *--dvd:  C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation - The Complete Second Season (2001)

 

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I thought [my character Cordelia] was quite an intellectual, and more morose
than her years seemed to suggest, that she was an oddly lonely character considering
that she's a young person, and that she really kept herself to herself very much.

And yet, she had a kind of very tenacious spirit. And she sort of really believed in justice
and would never let it go. And if she thought that justice wasn't being done, even though
it was not seen as conventionally the right thing to do, she would follow through her idea
of justice. And I just thought she was a woman with quite a few contradictions. ...

I liked the fact that she wasn't too sure that she wanted to necessarily be a detective.
I mean, she seems quite an able girl. And I don't think she'd ever dreamt of really becoming
a detective. ... I mean, if I was a man, I don't know if I'd really want to go and be in a detective
agency that just gets asked to try and find cats and dogs. I mean, I don't know how suitable a job
it is for a human, really, never mind a woman. And that was sort of my attitude.

And I thought she would be trying to prove herself as a young person just as much as a woman.

      Helen Baxendale  .... [from National Public Radio interview, 1998]

*--video: An Unsuitable Job For A Woman  starring Helen Baxendale

*--source book: P. D. James An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
 

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"I like her because she's a real warts-and-all character who makes terrible mistakes -
certainly not one of those know-all characters who always solves everything."
 Helen Mirren - about her character: Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison [from helenmirren.com]

*--video:Prime Suspect - Boxed Set

....     Amy Rennert Helen Mirren: Prime Suspect: A Celebration
 
 

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*****Erin Brockovich*--[dvd]

"Why are women who possess a firm round butt and full breasts considered unintelligent?
The thought crossed my mind while I was watching "Erin Brochovich," a film based on
a true story of a single mother's fight with a corporation that is poisoning a town's
water supply. ..."   from article My Take on Brochovich by Yvette Plummer [Womenfilms.com]

....Take It From Me: Life's a Struggle But You Can Win by Erin Brockovich
 
 
 

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   John Thaw / 'Inspector Morse'

"Inspector Morse... drank a great deal too much, had a morbid obsession with classical music
and cryptic crosswords and was irascible both with his subordinates and superiors: in no sense
a team player."     from review by Michael Leapman of book The Remorseful Day

*--book: The Remorseful Day

*--video:Inspector Morse - The Remorseful Day - includes a 55min. documentary
    *--*--called THE LAST MORSE with interviews of John Thaw and Kevin Whatley, and others.
 
 

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[Did you meet any actual profilers while preparing for the show?]

"I met agents with the FBI in Atlanta. And I also talked to a man, Bob Ressler,
who sort of pioneered the field of profiling, and I had extensive conversations
with him over the phone and read all of his books when I was doing my homework for the show.

[What does an FBI profiler do?]

"Well, criminals who commit pattern crimes and can get away with it are usually
pretty intelligent. They are pretty organized and they know what they are doing.
And they really enjoy it. So the profiler goes in and looks at the physical evidence
and the forensic evidence and takes it to a different level.

He looks at the behavior of the killer by looking at what kind of victim
that killer has chosen, and the manner in which he's killed that victim,
and what kind of person that victim was.

He can kind of go into the killer's mind and determine what kind of person that killer is. ...
it's really amazing what stuff they come up with, and who they've been able to catch this way."

   Ally Walker - portrays forensic psychologist Dr. Samantha Waters in "Profiler" [Area 51 interview]

*-books
 

Paul J. Brantingham, Patricia L. Brantingham  Environmental Criminology

John E. Douglas  The Cases That Haunt Us: From Jack the Ripper to JonBenet Ramsey, the FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Sheds Light on the Mysteries That Won't Go Away [Amazon.com:] "By applying criminal personality profiling techniques he developed while stalking more current killers, Douglas provides a fresh, sage outlook on some disturbing history. ... Douglas is founder of the FBI's Serial Killer Profiling Unit. His method of solving a crime by entering the mind of the killer inspired Thomas Harris's book The Silence of the Lambs."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Complete Sherlock Holmes "..authorized by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
estate, contains all 4 full-length novels and all 56 short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes... over a thousand pages.."

Colin Evans.  The Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World's Most Baffling Crimes

Donna M. Jackson, Charlie Fellenbaum The Bone Detectives : How Forensic Anthropologists
   Solve Crimes and Uncover Mysteries of the Dead

Robert K. Ressler  I Have Lived in the Monster : Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Serial Killers

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*--dvds:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The X-Files - The Complete Third Season

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