David V. Canter is a psychologist. He began his career as an architectural psychologist studying the interactions between people and buildings, publishing and providing consultancy on the designs of offices, schools, prisons, housing and other building forms as well as exploring how people made sense of the large scale environment, notably cities. He set up the Journal of Environmental Psychology in 1980. His work in architecture led to studies of human reactions in fires and other emergencies. He pioneered offender profiling in Britain. He helped police in 1985 on the Railway Rapist case. He was the Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey for ten years, where he developed Investigative Psychology described in detail in Investigative Psychology: Offender Profiling and the Analysis of Criminal Action and a course curriculum. He was Director of the Centre For Investigative Psychology which is based at the University of Liverpool. Since 2009 he has been at the University of Huddersfield. At Liverpool University Canter developed the MSc programme in Investigative Psychology which he directed until 2007. He no longer directs this programme which has consequently changed to reflect the wider arena of Forensic Psychology and a more balanced view of the field. He is the founder and director of the International Academy for Investigative Psychology, a professional academy for researchers seeking to apply social science to investigative and legal processes.

David Canter believes the roots of murder can be better understood by careful consideration of the parallels between the criminal's psychological journey and the actual paths he follows. He conducts a meticulous exploration of a number of notorious crimes, taking us on the murderers' journeys in both the psychological and geographical sense. His work has enable police departments across the world to solve a number of high-profile cases, since his contribution to the capture of the vicious "railway murderer", John Duffy. He describes how the uptake of this innovative approach is enriching detectives' mental maps of the how and why of murder, throwing light on previously unsolved crimes as far afield as Newfoundland, Las Vegas and New Zealand. With first-hand experience of applying his techniques, Canter expands on his theories of what distinguishes criminals from each other, probing depp into the twisted logic of men whose crimes have shocked the world. He gives a detailed profile of his "marauders and commuters" theory - looking at killers whose confused and devious attempts to satisy their brutal desires led to their capture. An in-depth study is made of murderers like Fred West and the Belgian Marc Dutroux - who constructed "spiders' webs" to lure and then destroy their victims. He shows how these webs operated like black holes, due to the absence of information relate to the disappearance of the victims. Details are also given of criminal "marauders" who venture out to find their victims, as well as the "travelling killers", like Robert Black, Peter Sutcliffe and Peter Moore. Most chillingly, the role of the victims is examined: how someone can unwittingly become etched on a murderer's map without realising the journey they are taking could be their last.