A Book Recommendation

By Steve Pease/Michael Chandos 

Does it seem logical to you that writers of Private Eye mysteries should have real-life experience as a PI? But that's not often the case. Famously, Samuel Dashiell Hammett worked the mean streets in San Francisco for Pinkerton before he started to write, and his books are noted for their realism, true human grime and base human motivations, and excellent dialog that sounded tough without using made-up slang and deliberate word misspellings. 

I ran my own single proprietor investigations business for 7 years, Glass Key Investigations. I was trying to write PI stories, and I decided I needed to do more research and a lot more reading. At the time, the State of Colorado had a licensing program that involved a study guide and professional standards for a PI business. I studied key Colorado laws about stalking, privacy and property. And, amazingly, the basic test was open book, so I made a notebook with copies of all the stated references, read them thoroughly, got the prerequisite Errors and Omissions insurance, liability insurance, and took the 55-question test. I think I missed one, perhaps a deliberately convoluted question designed so that no one got 100%. Also, amazingly, some people failed the 60% pass-line.

I took the test, and Shazaam, I was one. I joined the State professional PI association, took all their training, moved into a spare room in a friend's office and started marketing. While many PIs specialize in cases like legal defense, child support and consumer fraud, I accepted a wide variety of cases to maximize my experience, from clients who couldn't pay more than $50 to wealthy people and law firms that retained me for years. I put the biz to bed and I'm now mining my experiences. Writing and selling mystery and PI short stories during those 7 years. Good time spent.

Joe Gores didn't plan on becoming a PI. He needed a job and had an opportunity. He didn't plan on being a PI mystery writer either, but his experience led him to the page. He won three Edgars, two in the same year in different writing categories and one for a Kojak TV script. His mainstream stories (he often wrote beyond the PI paradigm) involve Daniel Kearny Associates, aka DKA, an investigations firm focused on difficult commercial cases, principally car repossession. The third-person written cases always involve more than being the Repo Man. They are like Hammett's stories, based on real experiences and real people.

"31 Cadillacs" was nominated for the Edgar Novel in 1992. It has a humorous tone without trying to be a "funny" story. It involves the death of an old man, an intricate Gypsy funeral rite and the coordinated theft of 32 brand-new Cadillacs from Bay Area dealerships. DKA is contracted to track down and recover the cars. The job takes the men and women of DKA all over the US, even to Hawaii, the ultimate battle of wits between street-smart PIs and a team of Gypsy car thieves trying to stage the Funeral of the Century for the passed King of the Gypsies.

Except, it's more than that.