Missing Persons: a writer's guide to finding the lost, the abducted and the escaped, by Fay Faron, was an entertaining and informative book. Part of The Howdunit Series, it is one of a group of books designed to describe the real work of detection in an effort to help murder mystery writers craft their characters and plots more authentically. This particular edition focuses on finding missing persons. The writer is a private investigator who owns an agency memorably titled, Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency. (She explains how she came up with that title in the book.)
It was published in 1997, so some parts of the book were a bit dated, especially those sections where she outlines the sources of information for finding missing persons. The internet was still in its infancy then, so her research mainly involved using old-fashioned paper sources (egads!), face-to-face interviewing, and actual gumshoe-ing, or searching on foot. (For those of you who wonder, gumshoe refers to shoes that have gum soles and are therefore quiet.)
Despite the subject's being potentially grim, the writer's tone was light and her descriptions witty (what you'd expect from someone who named her agency Rat Dog Dick). Her list of the types of people she was hired to look for was very interesting. People are missing for a variety of reasons, some of them innocent, some not-so-innocent. When she first started looking for missing persons, her specialty was tracking down people who owed money to the court. Once she started her own company, she specialized in finding the missing, whatever the reason. She even worked with the Oprah show on a series of episodes helping people find lost relatives. But she refused to take some cases; if she thought she was going to get "stiffed, stuffed, or scalleywagged," as she put it, she steered clear.
Throughout the book, Faron illustrates her points with stories of some of her cases. They are very entertaining, especially the ones involving scoundrels, a type of missing person. (See the book for her chapter, "The Profile of the Scoundrel.") And not surprisingly, she is working on a mystery novel of her own. I had not heard of her before this, but I plan to check out her other writing.
All in all, a worthwhile read, even if you're not interested in writing mystery novels!
Next: Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, a book about diagramming sentences by Kitty Burns Florey.
 |
| Fay Faron |
Despite the subject's being potentially grim, the writer's tone was light and her descriptions witty (what you'd expect from someone who named her agency Rat Dog Dick). Her list of the types of people she was hired to look for was very interesting. People are missing for a variety of reasons, some of them innocent, some not-so-innocent. When she first started looking for missing persons, her specialty was tracking down people who owed money to the court. Once she started her own company, she specialized in finding the missing, whatever the reason. She even worked with the Oprah show on a series of episodes helping people find lost relatives. But she refused to take some cases; if she thought she was going to get "stiffed, stuffed, or scalleywagged," as she put it, she steered clear.
Throughout the book, Faron illustrates her points with stories of some of her cases. They are very entertaining, especially the ones involving scoundrels, a type of missing person. (See the book for her chapter, "The Profile of the Scoundrel.") And not surprisingly, she is working on a mystery novel of her own. I had not heard of her before this, but I plan to check out her other writing.
All in all, a worthwhile read, even if you're not interested in writing mystery novels!
Next: Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog, a book about diagramming sentences by Kitty Burns Florey.
No comments:
Post a Comment