John Douglas is a former special agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, one of the first criminal profilers, and a criminal psychology writer. After retiring from the FBI, where he headed the elite Investigative Support Unit and was the real-life model for FBI Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, he helped set up Mindhunters, Inc., with Mark Olshaker, a site that provides information on their writing as well as criminal justice and profiler resources. He and Mark Olshaker coauthored the New York Times bestseller Mindhunter.
