Customer Reviews

Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts: True Adventures of a Female P.I.

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Cici McNair weaves her memoir through the deep south of Mississippi and the streets of New York City. After traveling the world and trying her hand at a variety of careers, Cici decides to become a private investigator. Cici soon learns that becoming a P.I., especially a female one, is not as easy as she first thought. When the charismatic Vinny Pardo in New York City finally gives her a chance, for six dollars an hour, Cici is officially on her way. Discovering that this industry is primarily made up of retired homicide detectives and men, Cici learns the ropes and rules when being put into action almost immediately. Trailing adulteresses and breaking up counterfeit designer purse rings in New York's Chinatown, Cici begins to thrive in her new role and gains respect in the industry and on the streets.

When she returns to her small hometown deep in Mississippi to be with her mother, she realizes that being a P.I. down South is massively different then working in the big city. While uncovering cases, Cici begins to uncover her past. Her career continues to flourish and with every new case and position, Cici peels away at her own exterior. In doing so, she lets her past all flow out little by little as her guard comes down. The reader is let into Cici's private life and a new viewpoint of the narrator is revealed. McNair feeds tidbits and anecdotes about herself while sitting in cars at stakeouts and her secrets and character come out in a slow and steady pace that McNair seems to feel comfortable with. Prior to this, little is known about Cici, the revelations make it easier to determine what is going on in her head as she speaks. By opening up as the book unfolds, a face and personal story forms for the before faceless, unseen P.I.

McNair is a great storyteller. The memoir is full of humor, action, suspense, and emotional moments, particularly when she describes her overbearing and unlovable father. McNair's cast of characters throughout the memoir and her life are a motley crew and McNair details their quirks and personalities with precision. Her conversational style puts the reader right in the action, on the stakeouts, in the office, and into Cici's life.

You have to read this book. I loved it. I really truly did. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I have actually worked for a few Private Investigators in my lifetime, although none as colorful or adventurous as the groupsCici worked with...I could still relate to so much that she discovered within the P.I. world.

Cici McNair has lived more then one lifetime of adventures. I enjoyed her thoughts and reminiscing of her childhood, her adult life and her adventures as a P.I. She carefully reconstructs her life for you. You come to understand the person she is without be overwhelmed or discouraged. You can feel the joys, agonies,elation and defeats as you learn more and more about this non-Southern Belle.

As she works with three distinct P.I. firms you can clearly understand where she learns her resourcefulness, tact, street smarts and expertise. So much of what makes a great P.I. is natural andCici is a definite pro at creating the images necessary to make busts, stings and incriminate the right people.

More memoirs should be this delightful and insightful. Ms. McNair takes the time to create the scenery, background and personas of the individuals in her life without losing the reader in unwanted fluff or information.

I have only one warning for this book. There is some language that might shock you and is a bit colorful. It was not offensive to me because it is definitely the way some "characters" in the P.I. or Police world speak so it was an appropriate description of those individuals. Plus this is a memoir...the author must relay conversations as they were presented or else it becomes fiction. If you sensitive to colorful language regardless of the scenario...this book may not be your cup of tea.Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts: True Adventures of a Female P.I.

Cici McNair is a good storyteller. I found the cases to be extremely interesting (just a warning, though, that this book isn't a how-to on detective work) and the humorous parts still have me shaking my head and laughing.

Since all the sections were mixed together, it's hard to tell, but about a third of the book was a rather serious look at her childhood (which included verbal abuse) and her adventurous adulthood before she decided to become a detective. About a third of the book covered various cases she worked: finding missing persons, doing background checks on people or businesses, surveillance, undercover investigations of counterfeit goods, etc. Another third described the people she worked with and gave often-humorous stories about their interactions at the office.

A couple of times, she gave all the information on a case or decision but didn't neatly spell everything out, probably assuming the conclusion was as obvious to the reader as it was to her. I had no problem following what was going on, but this book was a group "out loud" read and one of the three of us couldn't figure out what happened in these cases.

When other people in the story used bad language, the author left it in the dialogue, which means some sections had a great deal of cussing or were otherwise very crude.

Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable memoir to readers who are interested in detective work or who enjoy reading novels about detectives.


Reviewed by Debbie from Different Time, Different Place Book Reviews (differenttimedifferentplace. blogspot. com)

"Detectives Don't Wear Seatbelts" is a fun-filled ride of the true life experiences of a female private investigator. Cici McNair has the knack of a good story teller. This memoir follows Cici as she tries to break into the private detective business. She does it with such flair and humor that I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. The P.I. business is not always like they show on television, yet her descriptive off-the-wall narratives are just as excellent!

In her book Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts, Cici McNair introduces readers to her very unusual life. As the title suggests, she's a private detective, and stories about her experiences as a detective form the backbone of her memoir: her initial attempts to break into the business, stake-outs with guys with thick accents and foul mouths, investigations into counterfeit property or accusations of rape or lunchtime shenanigans, wearing a wire in the diamond district, in seedy warehouses, in a massage parlor. The author walks us through her role in a great many cases. It's fascinating, real-life stuff, the nitty gritty of detection, from paperwork to phone calls to the innumerable times the author has had to fake her way through a meeting to get information. She assumes an identity, swallows the information she'll need to pass herself off, and walks into a dangerous situation to lie her way through it and get her mark to say something incriminating on tape.

Woven through this main narrative are two equally interesting threads. The first has to do with the author's family: brothers and a sister whom an ex-homicide detective and friend of McNair's described as "the worst people I've ever met in my life"; Cici's mother, a likable, genteel Southern lady who was, however, abused during parts of her life; and the author's father, a menacing figure for whom an early death was insufficient reward. Finally there are the pre-detective days, which McNair spent rootless, traveling around the world and consorting with exciting characters--gun-runners and princes and the occasional fiancé. She's been suspected more than once in her life of working for the CIA, which is not the sort of thing that's said behind the back of your average suburban housewife.

McNair's book is--I'll use the word again--a fascinating read. It could have been a bit shorter: those descriptions of the guys she's worked with--and in particular, some of their dialogue--could have been cut back. (Readers should persevere if they're put off by this in the book's early chapters.) But I'm very happy to have read it.

-- Debra Hamel

Simply put this is a great book. I loved it, couldn't put it down and felt like it included me in Cici McNair's struggle to survive in the male dominated world of international private investigation. It wasn't like I was reading about someone else's experience, it was like I was right beside her when she was doing servailance, tailing subjects and sorting out scams, questionable characters and multi million dollar knock-off operations. I was drawn into case after case as Cici not only survived but eventually thrived. Cici involves you in cases from Mississipi to New York and across Europe. This book has stayed with me and I find myself now impatiently waiting for her next one. Read it. Experience it.

Ah the life of a Private Investigator - the glamour, the glitz the sitting for hours in a dirty van that smells like day old gym socks. Wait don't you drive a Corvette, drink Latte's and right the wrongs in a day? Well there is some helping of the innocent but less good deeds and allot more sitting at your computer, answering the phone, chasing down leads and worrying if your paycheck is going to clear the bank. All this plus trying to figure out which warehouse is storing all the fake Coach purses is more than enough for one day.

All of the stories in this book would have made for a great fiction read but when your own life is more unbelievable than any case you have ever investigated what do you do with this information - write a book of course. The life that Cici McNair led was complicated, messy and highly dramatic at times. While some parts were exciting, others were sad and many were downright scary. Every experience is unique and eye opening and Ms. McNair tells the tales of her life with exuberance and a flowing style of writing the draws you from one part to the next without missing a heartbeat. Cici shows daring with her decisions and adventure in her life style choices while not all well thought out they are at the very least entertaining. She takes lovers on a whim, jobs are chosen out of the phone book, career decisions made off of an idea during breakfast and all this is applied with a tremendous amount of self-therapy.

The only draining chapters are those that involve her family and the dynamics that made up a southern family. She was raised by a loving mother and an emotionally stagnant father who thought verbal abuse was the correct path to child rearing and relationship building. To feel her pain of loss and conflict with siblings would be made on its own but the stress of trying to help her mother live when the world was putting a stop to it tore at my heart and I felt her pain and agony at trying to deal with a situation that could not be resolved with reason.

When reading this book I wondered how someone could possibly grow up to be a well developed adult. Well you can and apparently you decide to investigate other people's lives and figure out that everybody has a secret and with the right tools and enough money Cici McNair can find them for you.

Cici McNair doesn't just live her memoir, she tells it with distinct intensity, a raconteur who grabs your lapels and doesn't let go. She's bold, imminent, aggressive, brash. She doesn't just tell a good story, she tells a story well. Like the best detective novelists, she tells a very human story of believable struggles between complex characters for meaningful payoff. And like the best memoirists, her life happens right in your face.

McNair became a detective on a whim, which, if we believe her, is how she's lived her whole life. She pushed limits, took chances, and wouldn't hear "no" for an answer even before a midlife career change made her a PI. So when she went toe-to-toe with the old boy network, that only became her newest challenge. How she met that challenge makes this the most electric detective story in many moons.

Her prior journalism career made her a natural digging up dirt and finding missing persons. Her novelist's determination gave her the determination to face a difficult job for discouraging pay. So this isn't McNair's story as a detective, it's her story as an oversized personality. And though her episodic narrative structure deals with many small cases rather than one or two epics, she's as dramatic as any femme fatale you've previously read.

Reading her intricately detailed story, you can imagine the tedium of a long stakeout tailing an adulterous blonde through a hot Mississippi night. You can feel her frustration pushing against the testosterone barriers trying to get one foot into professional detective territory. And you can share her triumph when she cracks cases no one else can touch, bringing home the trophies the men only dream of.

McNair's journey from big-city PI to "rural detectivery" and back makes her story happen before you with the nail-biting intensity of a Hollywood movie. She learns from the men even as she schools them. Perhaps her story will get adapted. I imagine McNair played by--who? Geena Davis? Angelina Jolie? Whoever, I'd pay money to see that film, because if it contains even a fraction of the author's bravado, it'll be spectacular.

What interesting tales CiCi McNair has to tell! From her sad childhood, her rebellious young adult life of high adventure, and then her quest to become a PI, CiCi's adventures come to life. The emotions in the book run from sad, to frightening, and at times hilarious.

She started in PI work by seeking employment with different PI firms at a very low wages. From this meager start she was eventually able to start her successful business, Green Star Investigations, out of Philadelphia, PA.

Not only did she have to deal with the problems of being a woman in a man's world, but because of her unique background and travels, her employers and coworkers were always suspicious of her. Many of the people she worked with were rough characters, mostly retired male law enforcement, but she always held her own and made the best of the situation. She could make the most mundane stakeout sound exciting and the rather hum drum product knockoff case as interesting as a high profile case.

As the story of her life unfolds, the reader learns about her family, the mysterious and dangerous men in her life, and her desire for a life "outside the box". Her personality and energy radiates throughout the book as she shares her very unusual life.

I suppose I should say I didn't know what to expect in this book about a private investigator and after reading the book, I still am not certain of these expectations. The book has some moments of entertainment, some serious, some humorous, but most mixed up and confusing to me as a reader. Cici might be a good private eye but I don't know if she could keep her individual clients separated from each other.

The last part of the book was better since it laid out some of her actual cases without mixing up past history of family and clients. Sorry Cici but I did not enjoy most of your book. Some of the story of your life before being a private investigator was interesting to a point but also was confusing to me in many areas. It read as a soap opera too many times.

Sorry not to give you a top rating but it might be just me.