Chasing Cheaters in Fiction: Electronic Investigations or E-Catching
Posted by Writing PIs on July 22, 2011
We’re guests today at the mystery writers’ blog Stiletto Gang, where we’re talking about chasing cheaters in fiction (“Infidelity Investigations: E-Catching the Cheater”). What’s “e-catching”? Loosely, it’s an abbreviation that encompasses various means of electronic investigations. In our post, we address requests we commonly receive from prospective clients, such as:
“I see a new cell phone number on my husband’s cell phone history. I think it’s this woman he’s seeing. I want her name and address.”
“I think my fiancée is fooling around. I want to download spyware on her phone, listen in on her conversations.”
Drop by the blog and see our answers. Today, July 22, we’re also answering questions about infidelity investigations, so ask and we’ll answer! Plus at the end of the day we’re picking a visitor’s name to be gifted a free Kindle version of How to Write a Dick: A Guide to Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths.
Stiletto Gang post: Infidelity Investigations: E-Catching the Cheater
Have a great Friday, Writing PIs
Guns, Gams & Gumshoes 
cmalbrecht said
Many many years ago I read a book by Leslie T. White called “Me, Detective”.
In it Mr. White, inspired I believe by his friend Erle Stanley Gardener, wrote this book about his many adventures as a private eye.
As I recall it was certainly glamorous and interesting, especially to a young punk like I was, but….
There was no murder. No mystery really and in the end, not a lot happened. A book like that can be interesting certainly, but any serious private eye reader wants a guy like Marlowe or Spade or Archer, etc. to get out there and kick some ass and get the bad guy. He doesn’t have to follow the rules and he doesn’t have to methodically collect evidence to present to the DA because the DA hates him and he feels the same way about the DA. He gets his man, or woman. The perp may never be convicted of anything, if our PI doesn’t whack him, but we come away satisfied because he did what he was supposed to do.
I’ve been a PI and never worked on anything that wasn’t routine, humdrum or worth writing about in my memoirs (if I ever write any).
If I ever stumbled over a corpse, I’d have gone home and hidden under the bed, hoping I hadn’t left any fingerprints or pee-pee at the scene.