Denver’s Nick and Nora: Real-Life Private Eyes in the News

You know us as the Writing PIs. In this week’s Westword, Denver’s weekly independent newspaper, we’re also “these married Denver detectives” in the paper’s cover story:

That cover is pretty cool (see above). They made it look like a beat-up dime novel with a tough, noir-ish private eye in a fedora and trenchcoat, holding a gun. The top right “page” corner is folded over, like you’re keeping your place in the paperback story. The reporter, Melanie Asmar, met with us between three and four times for interviews…toward the end she told us of her vision for the story (layering a writer’s PI story, based on one of our cases with us as the story’s protagonists, with interviews with us). She did a fantastic job.

To read about our cases, how we became PIs, and more than you probably ever wanted to know about a couple of married Denver detectives, click on the below link:

Westword: The Plot Thickens

Have a great week, Writing PIs AKA Denver’s Nick and Nora

Raymond Chandler in Brooklyn: An Interview with Reed Farrel Coleman

Raymond Chandler in Brooklyn: An Interview with Reed Farrel Coleman

Here at Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes we tag ourselves as a couple of PIs who also write…but today make that a couple of PIs who dig the writing of Reed Farrel Coleman.  His PI Moe Prager hits the mark.  A blue-collar private eye with street smarts and a heart on his sleeve.  A number of you reading this blog are followers of Colleen’s romance novels, so to all of you: Want a great read with a hero who not only understands women, but can make your heart soar in the course of a nail-gripping crime story?  Check out Reed Farrel Coleman. 

But don’t just listen to us.  Below are some quotes from other fans of Reed Farrel Coleman:

“Moe Prager is my kind of private eye.”  -Michael Connelly

“If you’re a fan of Ross Macdonald, Laurence Block’s Matt Scudder, Peter Spiegelman, Lehane, Pelecanos, Connelly…you gotta try Coleman…start with Walking the Perfect Square.”  -David Thompson, Busted Flush Press

“Coleman may be one of the mystery genre’s best-kept secrets.”  Sun-Sentinel

Reed’s writing has won the Shamus, Barry, and Anthony awards, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, and Gumshoe.  Barbara Peters, owner of Poisoned Pen Press and Bookstore has referred to Reed as “Raymond Chandler in Brooklyn.”  So we’re pleased to have had the opportunity to interview him this week, in anticipation of his book tour for Tower (by Reed and Ken Bruen, Busted Flush Press, available September 15).  A link to Busted Flush Press follows the interview, below:

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes:  We loved the quote on your website from Maureen Corrigan of NPR referring to you as a “hard-boiled poet.”  Jack Bludis recently commented on DetecToday that you write ”the cleanest prose of those still doing PIs.”  Is this a result of your early love and writing of poetry?

Reed: Last things first, my professor at Brooklyn College was David Lehman, who, if I’m not mistaken, is now the chair of the English Dept at the New School in Manhattan.  Ginsberg, Ashbery, and Lehman would sometimes combine classes for lessons and readings.  Not a bad trio.  It’s true that I began my writing career as a poet.  I think I’m the only person who ever quit his high school football team—I was a weak side tackle and long snapper—to write poetry…well, the only one who admits it.  I have published about ten or fifteen poems over the years and co-edited a poetry journal—Poetry Bone—for about three years.  But even as far back as college, I knew there was no real future in it for me.  I was good, but not great and to survive in that world, good isn’t good enough.  After college I was working at Kennedy Airport in the cargo business and I decided to take a night class at Brooklyn College just to keep my mind active.  The only class that fit my schedule was a survey course on detective fiction.  I immediately fell in love with Chandler and Hammett.  I saw the poetry—though very different from each other—in their prose and thought I might be able to do that in a more modern way.  I think, to some extent, I’ve been successful.  The thing about poetry is that it forces me to be clear and economical in my imagery and helps enforce a kind of unconscious rhythm in my writing.  I don’t count beats, but if you read my work, the meter is definitely there.             

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes: Your writing reflects a clear understanding of the day-to-day experience of the average blue-collar PI.  We know you worked closely with your friend from the NYPD, but did you also work closely with any PIs to help you understand the profession?

 Reed:  I take that as high praise.  Thank you very much.  I have to confess that I have never worked for a single moment with a PI, not a real one.  My professors on this subject were Matt Scudder, Philip Marlowe, the Continental Op, Sam Spade…  Writer see, writer do.  As to the blue-collar aspect, that comes from personal experience.  While I have had many many jobs in my life, the ones I have enjoyed most, the ones most meaningful and most gratifying to me have been the blue-collar jobs.  In fact, up until a few years ago, I delivered home heating oil.  I still have a valid commercial Class B license with haz mat, air brakes and tank endorsements.  The thing about blue-collar work is that it gives a person a measuring stick.  You go out in the truck with twenty deliveries and at the end of the day, you know what you’ve accomplished.  When I worked in an office, the rules always changed and there was no objective way to measure performance.  PIs, they can measure themselves.  They have tasks and they either do what they’re hired to do or fail.  And anybody who has worked any kind of blue-collar job understands what the day to day grunt work is like.  

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes: What poets affect your hardboiled writing?

Reed: TS Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Raymond Chandler, William Blake, Samuel D. Hammett

 Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes: You may want to take the fifth on this (so as to not inadvertently step on anyone’s toes), but what writers in today’s PI genre do you consider excel at the craft?

Reed:  There are many, but of my contemporaries I love SJ Rozan, Peter Spiegelman, and Ken Bruen.

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes: Thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions.  We look forward to meeting in person on your book tour.

Blurb for Tower: In the tradition of The Long Goodbye, Mystic River, and The Departed, Tower is a powerful meditation on friendship, fate, and fatality. A twice-told tale done in the unique format of parallel narratives that intersect at deadly crossroads, Tower is like a beautifully crafted knife to the heart.

To order Tower, go to http://www.bustedflushpress.com/index.php

Answering Writers’ Questions Re: Cell Phone Hacking

More and more, we get questions from writers about cell phone hacking.  It’s a hot topic often covered in news stories (currently, the media has been full of stories about Murdoch and cell phone hacking), it was the premise of The Wire (a show your Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes authors deeply miss), and it’s a very real issue for any body who owns a cell phone.  Great fodder to use in stories!

Therefore, we thought it’d be interesting to post one of our recent Q&As about cell phone hacking in today’s blog.

Writer’s Question:  There’s an interesting video that’s been circulating on the internet.  I’ve received it twice. It’s about illegal surveillance of cell phones.  It claims there is software out there that will allow someone to hear your conversations even if your cell phone is turned off,  and even if you change your cell phone and your number frequently.  What is not clear is this; does the software have to be installed on the victim’s phone or is it something that can be used remotely by the criminal/stalker?

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes Answer:  Yes, there is software out there that allows someone to hear your conversations even if your cellphone is turned off.  Recently, there was a news article written by a news team’s producer who allowed her phone to have this illegal software downloaded onto it, and the news team then documented how intrusive this software is (a link to this article is at the end of this blog **).  In another article by Thomas Slovenski (a cellular forensic examiner) he says “Two years ago, I would have thought that this person wore a tin-foil cap to bed.  Now I listen intently.  As a Cellular Forensics Examiner, I have seen the progression of this new and frightful software that is being downloaded to cell phones today.  I have lab tested many of the products with very position results.  Some call it ‘spyware,’ while others refer to it as ‘malware.’  No matter what one calls it, it sill produces the same thing…FEAR!”

Our understanding is, yes, software must be installed on the victim’s phone.  This could conceivably be done remotely through the cell phone user opening a file attachment (just as people should be cautious downloading attachments in their email, they should exercise this same caution downloading attachments in their cell phones). 

Tips for protecting your cell phone:

• Never let strangers (or any one you don’t know well for that matter) use your cell phone.  Never loan it out.  (Although this is a great set up in a story–a stranger [or even a "friend"] desperately needs to borrow a character’s cell phone and ends up downloading malware on it).
• If a phone is lost/stolen, and then recovered, do not use it to transmit sensitive data until it has been thoroughly checked by a celluar professional.
• Turn off the Bluetooth when it’s not in use.  Keeping it on leaves an open door when you are not using a secure headset.
• Do not accept any connection with which you are not familiar.  If you are sitting in a Starbuck’s and your phone is requesting permission to connect to an unfamiliar device, refuse the connection.
• Do not open attachments from parties you don’t know.
• Password protect your phone.

**Below is the link to the article mentioned above  (where the producer purposefully had malware downloaded onto her cell phone and the news team documented the results).  This article may be time sensitive, so if it  no longer displays when you click on the link, it’s no longer available:

(Article) Tapping Your Cell Phone: http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?s=9346833

Answering Writers’ Questions About Surveillance and Law Enforcement & PIs Working Together

To all those who celebrate the 4th, hope you had a great one!

It’s nearly July 6, next to the last day of Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes virtual open house. Everyone who comments July 1-July 7 is eligible for gifts, from books to T-shirts to a book-safe-storage (see picture of one in July 1 post).  Winners names to be picked July 8!

For those keeping track, I’m now “outta the wild” (see last post).  Lost cell transmission for hours (and hours) which concerned Shaun to the point that he contacted the sheriff’s office of the region I was in.  Before I’d left “into the wild” on this rural surveillance, I’d had a lengthy meeting with several of the sheriffs for that region…however, when Shaun called their office, he got someone new and they said they’d never heard of me.  One of those small-town mis-communications, funny in retrospect, although it wasn’t very funny to Shaun at the time (hence Grumpy, which is how Shaun got). For those writing sleuth tales, think of the ramifications of such a disconnect in your own stories.

Meanwhile, we thought it’d be interesting to post some more recent writers’ questions about PIs, from a client “riding along” on a surveillance to whether law enforcement and PIs ever work together. 

WRITER’S QUESTION:  I’ve heard it’s illegal for a client to ride along on a surveillance with a PI in some states. How would we know which states it is illegal in? I’m sure there will be other things that come up that vary from state to state?  Should we call a PI from our state to ask?

GUNS, GAMS, AND GUMSHOES ANSWER: Calling a PI in your state is a good resource. If you are in a state where PIs are licensed, contact the licensing authority for guidance on these  matters (typically this licensing authority will be within the state dept.  of regulatory agencies or the state police).

WRITER’S QUESTION: Do police hire PIs for help?

GUNS, GAMS, AND GUMSHOES ANSWER: More likely, the police would cooperate with PIs on a case (although this isn’t common, it’s certainly occurred. For example, a few years ago, the NY police cooperated with local PIs to break a theft ring in the garment district). A key reason the police wouldn’t hire (versus cooperate w/) PIs is that by their employing a private citizen (such as a PI), the police lose “the color of government authority” including the ability to obtain warrants, rely on rules for search/seizure (such as the fellow officer rule), and finally the law enforcement agency concerned does not want the liability of a contract employee who is more than likely carrying a weapon and who very well may not carry enough insurance.

Saying all this, it’s plausible that a government agency other than a law-enforcement agency might hire a PI to do an independent investigation. Here in Colorado, a county commissioner office hired a Denver PI to conduct an investigation of sexual harrassment and financial misappropriation by an elected county official, who could not have been independently investigated by the sheriff’s office for that county (because of the close ties between the 2
offices, both elected offices).

Post a comment/questions, and we’ll be happy to answer.  Next post will be July 8 with the “virtual open house” winners’ names, so stay tuned…

Welcome to Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes!

Hello from the “writing PIs”–we’re professional PIs, who also happen to be writers, and we’ve combined both worlds in our Writing PIs in Novels online courses (see the Writing PIs in Novels link on the right side of this screen).  We own a private detective agency in Denver, Colorado,  where we specialize in legal investigations, domestic relations, personal injury, financial fraud, and babying a Rottweiler who thinks life’s all about sleeping in our her leather recliner.

We’re kicking off this blog to:

• Discuss topics of interest in the private investigations field.
• Post our articles on writing about sleuths, PIs, law enforcement, and legal eagles.
• Address questions from writers about writing PIs/sleuths. 

For this first post, we thought it’d be interesting to excerpt several of the past Q&As we’ve had in our classes from writers asking questions about private investigators.   Read on and feel free to comment:

WRITER’S QUESTION:  Are PIs given search warrants? And do you need a search warrant to snoop around public institutions like a university?

ANSWER:   Regarding search warrants, no, they aren’t issued to PIs.  Search warrants are a creature of law enforcement and they allow the government to intrude into areas owned or controlled by private persons or businesses.  Regarding the second part of your question, anyone may search an area of a public university that is open to public view and accessible to everyone.  Contrast this with a professor’s office or a student’s dorm room–there is an expectation to privacy in either scenario and a member of the public entering either one without permission commits a crime.  If law enforcement should enter these areas without a warrant, or without the consent of the occupants, any evidence obtained would be excluded in court and the law enforcement personnel could be disciplined (although this
isn’t likely).

WRITER’S QUESTION:  First, is there a time frame that an area remains a crime scene? I’m picturing the yellow caution tape in a public place and wondering how long that remains up. You mentioned a PI has the benefit  of arriving at a scene long after the body is found, so when is the scene no longer a scene? What happens if the PI arrives just a little  too late? And how does time frame apply to a crime scene in a residence? If say someone is found dead in a family room, how long do the residents of the house need to stay out of the room? I’m thinking  that from the time the police leave to when a PI shows up, a lot could happen in that room if a family member so desires.

ANSWER:  It’s important to make the distinction between what crime scene investigators for the police consider a crime scene and what the rest of us, including PIs, consider a crime scene.  In the latter instance, a crime scene is really just the place where a crime happened, which has returned to everyday use.  However, what police and crime scene investigators consider a crime scene is that area where, such as the space inside the yellow tape, careful protocols for evidence recordation and extraction are followed.

Regarding time frames, a police crime scene excludes all but those who are trained to respect procedures for preservation and collection of evidence.  Generally speaking, after a period of approximately 1-24 hours, the area is returned to normal use.

A PI would most likely never be allowed to enter a police crime scene.  PIs, however, can visit a crime scene long evacuated by the police and still gather critical evidence.  For example, in one of our experiences, we re-visited the scene of an attempted vehicular assault at least a month after it occurred.  What evidence did we gather weeks after the event?  For starters, the tire marks were still clearly seen on the pavement–we photographed these marks for the attorney.  We also measured the area where a complex set of vehicular maneuvers were alleged to have occurred.  Additionally, we videotaped the pattern of vehicular travel at the exact speeds alleged by the police.

Regarding a crime scene in a residence, specifically (per your question) a dead body found therein:  Be mindful that police will remove those parts of the family room that they consider important evidence (for example, blood-stained carpeting and drywall spattered with blood).  Also, police will photograph/videotape the family room in the exact state in which they found it.  In other words, by the time the family returns and changes anything, the PI will have copies of police photographs as well as access to physical evidence that’s within police custody.  There are certainly instances where PIs would still seek access to the home (for example, to photograph the layout, measurements, etc.) but that is accomplished through court order or consent of the victim’s family.

Thanks for visiting!

–End of post–

Disclaimer: Our comments are for the purpose of discussion and are not intended to supplant formal/approved training programs directed at private investigators.  This content is also not intended as legal advice.