Customer Reviews

Careers for Mystery Buffs & Other Snoops and Sleuths (McGraw-Hill Careers for You)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On a desperate lookout for a new career on these times of massive layoffs, I decided to read a guide that would suggest ways to achieve the ever more elusive "American dream" while at the same time working on a field I truly enjoy. Blythe Cameson has put out and average guide that is now invariably outdated (the book was printed in 1997), yet it gives preliminary information on the different careers for fans of the mystery genre like me.

I must admit I found no correlation whatsoever to the mystery genre in some of the careers explored, especially science careers such as astronomy. In Ms. Cameson's viewpoint, even careers such as sociology and psychology would not be directly related to mystery writing or reading, unless we all become our very own Miss Marples or Hercule Poirots. In fact, it could be said that for Cameson, almost every career in the world relates somehow to the mystery genre. Some careers like "landscape anthropologist" are, in all actuality, a specialization of the original discipline - i.e. anthropology - they are associated with, yet Cameson introduces them as a separate and independent career.

Perhaps because she is a writer, Cameson appears overtly enthusiastic in chapter 1, when expounding about the idea of becoming a mystery writer as the first occupational option for the mystery fan and as something that is fairly easy to achieve if one is persistent enough. However, it is not only rare but extremely hard to become published in today's world, and mystery writing presented as a career is not, in my opinion, a particularly good suggestion, at least not for a newbie.

The book does have some good resources listed, including career books, websites and institutions both on the national, governmental level as well as in the private sector, where to start - just start - a search towards future employment as a mystery fan. A true negative appears to be that most of the career options do not pay well, and if they do, they require long study, mostly ending with a Ph.D. Perhaps this is after all Cameson's method to ensure publication of the mystery fan's very own novel.