Dark Paths, Cold Trails: How a Mountie Led the Quest to Link Serial Killers to Their Victims

Geoff Hamilton, a former columnist for the Queen’s Journal, is a
Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

This book charts the rise of ViCLAS (the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis
System), a networked database now used by law enforcement in Ontario and
Quebec to track violent serial crimes. Focusing on the behind-the-scenes
work that went into creating the system in the late 1980s and refining
it up until the present day, Clark examines the role ViCLAS has played
in solving cases in parts of Canada, and how it could have, if it had
been in place earlier, helped capture such offenders as Paul Bernardo
early in his criminal career. The final chapter offers a stinging
critique of the bureaucratic foot-dragging that has hampered ViCLAS and
a passionate plea for the system’s full-fledged adoption on a national
scale.

There is certainly a bounty of fascinating material here, including
inside looks at the handling of the criminal cases against Clifford
Olson, Francis Roy, Karla Homolka, and Bernardo. Clark is, for the most
part, very persuasive in making his case for the importance of ViCLAS,
and the efforts of RCMP investigator Ron MacKay (who pioneered the
adoption and improvement of the system) are engagingly described.
Readers with a keen interest in the history of Canadian policing will
likely find much of value here.

What hurts the book is its poor organization—the narrative rambles,
doubles back inexplicably, and explores puzzling detours—and prose
that lapses into cloying sentimentalism and clichéd observations.
Clark’s misty-eyed valorization of particular law enforcement
officers, his inflated appraisal of the national anxiety about violent
crime, and his peculiar affection for jejune metaphors can
unintentionally trivialize his subject: “Much as we might like to
think it, those sworn to serve and protect us are not always white
knights who can protect us from all harm. They face a difficult task. It
is impossible to slay all the dragons when dinosaurs roam the earth.”
The subject of this book is psychological profiling, but we get,
finally, fairly little in the way of persuasive insight into what drives
violent offenders or those who hunt them.