Calling All Armchair Detectives: Sleuth Tips and Techniques at Your Fingertips
Like trying to sleuth along with TV-private eye Ray Donovan?
Wish you had a reference book to find some nifty technique for that private-eye character your're writing?
Want to locate your great-aunt's son by her first marriage?
This book's for you, pal.
How to Write a Dick discusses everything from the different types of investigative specializations (yes, there really are pet detectives) to homicide investigations to how new PIs kick-start their businesses to real-life case studies. And a lot more.
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Amazon provides free apps for easy downloading to read on your browser, PC or Mac computers, as well as on a variety of mobile devices.
Book Reviews
“If you want authenticity in creating a fictional private investigator for your stories, then this is a must-have reference book. Its authors, Colleen and Shaun, are living breathing PIs with years of actual experience in the PI game.”
~ R.T. Lawton, 25 years on the street as a federal special agent and author of 4 series in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
"This is a book that's going to go on my keeper shelf. Informative, helpful and easy to read. I'm so glad I heard about it!"
~HJF
"I was surprised how much I learned and how much fun this book is. It's a 'what's going on in the field' that's like a pre-write fact checker...It can stand alone as an insider's guide to the world - the real world - of the private detective."
~David Y.B. Kaufmann
"If [this book] had been around when I was fiction editor for THE THRILLING DETECTIVE WEB SITE, my job would have been much easier."
~Gerald So, editor, writer, book reviewer, moderator DetecToday
Book Excerpts
To read an excerpt, click on its link:
Did you know many current-day PIs use smartphone flashlight apps instead of clunky flashlights?
How to Write a Dick: Loss Prevention and Industrial Security
How to Write a Dick: Intellectual Property Investigations
How to Write a Dick: Catching the Cheater
How to Write a Dick: Real-Life PIs' Pet Peeves About Fictional PIs
About the Authors
Shaun Kaufman and Colleen Collins
Besides working as private investigators for nearly a decade...
Shaun Kaufman is also a trial attorney specializing in personal injury, criminal defense and business litigation. He has also trained private investigators during his nearly 30 years working in the criminal justice system.
Colleen Collins is also a multi-published novelist (several dozen novels -- her most recent novel, The Next Right Thing, features a private eye protagonist). She has also written several nonfiction books on private investigations (How Do Private Eyes Do That? and Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye).
Starting back around 2005, writers began contacting Shaun and Colleen with questions about sleuths, PIs, cops and legal eagles. Fielding those questions led to their teaching online classes to writers and presenting workshops at regional and national writers’ conferences (Left Coast Crime, Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, others). They have also written articles about private investigations for magazines, newsletters and online sites such as PI Magazine, Pursuit Magazine, PINow.com, Romance Writers Report, NINK (for Novelists, Inc.), Reflections in a Private Eye, and others.
How to Write a Dick covers PI training, specialized areas of investigations, resources and techniques, technological tools, real-life case studies, a Gumshoe Glossary and more.
Teaching courses and writing articles for writers led to the Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes blog, which in turn led to their writing How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths.
To order, click here.
"This is an amazing book and I'm very happy that I got it. The authors cover so much ground about a PI's life and work, I'd find it hard to get a more thorough overview. Since this book is geared towards writers, I think the authors provided just the right amount of detail regarding specific PI work."
~Allie R.