The best books about what it’s like – and what it takes – to be a real-life private eye

The week I started working as a private investigator, a friend gave me The Big Sleep. I fell in love – with Raymond Chandler. To me, as a new PI, every word rang true. The book is set in Los Angeles, starring detective Philip Marlowe – “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it” – and I read it in Los Angeles, too, amid the sunstruck tangle of ambition and envy and deception and longing that makes the city such an easy place, I was learning, to be a private eye. Marlowe’s droll observations and his exquisite detachment were a fascinating introduction to PI life, and every so often now I read it again just to remember the thrill of when my world was new. 

Fictional lady detectives are sexy and fascinating, we can all agree. But what about real life? That’s the question asked and answered in this non-fiction book by brilliant crime writer Val McDermid, who lavishes her attention and experience over nearly 300 interview-packed pages to explore all the ways in which private investigation is – thank you – a very suitable job for a woman indeed. “Smart, strong and sure of themselves, they walk the mean streets to their own beat,” Val concludes. When I think of my friends who, like me, are real-life women PIs, I have to say Val McDermid has done her detective work – because that sounds exactly right.

When I was investigating the heartless murders that are the central mystery of my book, I discovered that the author of Cool Hand Luke had worked as a private investigator on the case back in 1976. The next afternoon I was on his doorstep. Donn Pearce was kind with his time and his advice. Asked for the key to his success as a PI, Donn said, simply: “I absorb.” Every detail, every moment, observed, evaluated, accounted for. It’s as true a description of detective work as you’ll ever find – and of Cool Hand Luke too. The book is not a detective story but it is a detective’s masterpiece, a harrowing prison saga told from the inside out in spare and beautiful sentences. Every word feels deeply lived, and so alive.

Obsession. It’s a hazard of the PI profession. I know a little bit about that, but no book will ever be as heartbreaking on this subject as I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Although Michelle McNamara was not a private eye when she started on the trail of the Golden State Killer, her clue-by-clue work to solve the case is an astounding portrayal of tenacious investigation – and of the toll obsession exacts. At times this book was so painful for me to read that it felt like picking through broken glass, but Michelle’s courage, her humanity, and her determination to find the truth shone through on every page.  

This provocative work of investigatory scholarship takes a dim view of private eyes, but that’s fair enough – as a detective (definitely not a saint) who has never carried a gun myself, I share the author’s dismay at the violent anti-heroes of mythic American lore. Ruehlmann’s question in this book is also my own: why are people so interested in private eyes? Answering it, he traces the idea of an omniscient private eye back to the outlaw vigilantes of the Old West, draws a distinction between intellectual English detectives and the musclemen of American noir, and includes an overview of modern masters of detective fiction along with a history of the profession starting in 18th-century France. Who knew? None of it is flattering, which makes it even more fun to read.