Customer Reviews

Missing Persons (Howdunit Writing)

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This is one of the highlights of the "Howdunit" series: it's not only informative and thorough, but it's great fun to read too. Besides being an experienced and successful PI, Faron is a lively writer who knows how to choose an anecdote to make a point, so the book is engrossing as well as useful. She clearly knows the business inside and out, so she covers aspects of the subject that most of us don't know exist, and her remarks on the seamier sides of the PI's job are priceless. She occasionally seems to remember that she's writing a book for mystery authors, and tosses in a few suggestions for plots or episodes that I found rather pointless, but these don't detract from the general helpfulness of the book. Her more "reference"-oriented final chapters are less entertaining, but I greatly appreciated her summaries of what kind of information is available from a particular source and how easily accessed it is: many books that purport to give information on how to find people are just unselective lists of sources without commentary. And her state-by-state breakdown of PI licensing laws and legal information was great: I'm working on a couple of mysteries set in the state where I used to live, and her guidance was very helpful. I hope Faron keeps the book updated: the Internet has transformed searching (for people or information), and some of her suggestions are already out of date. But, as a whole, this book is a terrific "checklist" of how and why people go missing and how to look for them, and well worth reading.

It's supposed to be a reference to find the lost, abducted and escaped. But the tips could help you become a missing person!

Some of the most interesting sections include:

"How People Purposely Hide Their Whereabouts"

"The Four-Step Formula for Finding Someone"

"Profile of the Lost Family Member"

There's so much more to this book than you can imagine. You're sure to find it a nice collection to your reference library.

Faron strikes again in the Missing Persons volume of the Howdunit series. Faron's advice on tracking people down was extremely helpful to me, both as an aspiring writer and a police officer (Faron gives tips on locating the hidden that they definitely don't teach you at the Academy...simple, easily-overlooked stuff that involves very little research). Faron's laid-back writing style and personal anecdotes make this an entertaining, as well as informative, read.

If you plan on constructing a plot for your novel that centers around finding a missing individual, then this book offers in-depth explanations of the people involved in conducting searches. It's convenient to possess this information in one book that is informative.

Only wish the author would stop trying to be clever all the time.

People who think they are witty, (very often) are not.
However, book contains info Private Eye writers can use.

This book covers the way in which professional detectives set about finding someone, and if your subject matter involves that situation in any way, I recommend it.

Missing Persons would be a worthwhile read just for the entertainment value--like Anne Wingate, who wrote Scene of the Crime, Fay Faron has a cockeyed sense of humor that I can definitely appreciate. But, like Scene of the Crime and Private Eyes, Missing Persons also offers a wealth of information about not only how to track down the missing and what resources are available, but the different types of missing persons--those who don't know they're missing, those who don't want to be found, and those who want to be found but are being hidden--and how likely a given missing person is to be findable. Definitely a worthwhile reference.