If you read or watch enough crime fiction, it’s easy to get the impression that private investigators spend most of their time solving murder cases. And of course, there’s a very long list of fictional PIs who do just that. The fact is, though, that real-life PIs don’t do a whole lot of murder investigation. They may work with the police to find out information, but they don’t really catch killers. So, what do they do? Let’s take a look a few fictional PIs to get a clearer sense of what the real ones do.
Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason is a busy attorney. His focus is defending his clients, and he doesn’t have a lot of time to, say, look up which company owns another, or who was married at one time to a given person. Instead, Mason relies on Paul Drake, who owns his own private investigation company. Drake finds out things like who owns a given gun, or whether a certain person checked into a hotel on a certain day. He brings that information and whatever evidence is needed to Mason, who then uses it. And Drake is not alone. Law firms do hire investigators when they are working on a case. Like Drake, those PIs find out things that the lawyers may not have the time to find out for themselves.
One of the most common jobs that PIs do is background checks on potential employees. Especially with today’s digital life, PIs can do checks for police records, former employment, and lots of other information that an employer may want to know. That’s actually part of what Julie Smith’s Talba Wallis does. She’s a New Orleans-based PI who works for an investigation firm. Companies hire her firm to do background checks of prospective employees, so when Talba’s boss gives her a file, it’s her job to find out as much as she can and report back. Talba’s company is also sometimes hired to find out if a spouse or prospective spouse is cheating.
That too, is something that real-life private detectives do. Just ask Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan. In Baltimore Blues, she’s just lost her job as a reporter and feels a bit at loose ends. An old friend hires her to find out if his fiancée is cheating, and that opens Tess up to a whole new career as a PI.
Insurance companies also frequently hire PIs, especially if they suspect fraud. That’s one of the things that Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone does as her ‘bread and butter’ work. In fact, when she starts out as a PI, she uses office space at California Fidelity Insurance Company in exchange for doing occasional PI work for them. This series started in the 1980s, so Kinsey doesn’t rely on digital ‘footprints’ the way today’s PIs do. But she knows how to spot insurance and other sorts of fraud.
Real-life PIs are also sometimes hired to find missing people. The police have a lot of resources at their disposal, but they also have a huge number of cases to investigate, and not a lot of spare time. What’s more, plenty of people disappear because they don’t want to be found, and unless they’ve committed a serious crime, it’s not illegal to simply go missing. The family may believe something terrible has happened but that doesn’t mean it has. So, people hire a PI. That’s the sort of PI Sam Wiebe’s Dave Wakeland is. For instance, in Invisible Dead, Gail Kirby hires Wakeland to find out the truth about her daughter Chelsea Loam. She has a suspicion that Chelsea was murdered by Ed Nichulls, but she can’t prove it, and she doesn’t know for sure what happened to her. Chelsea was a sex worker, and Gail knows that the police aren’t going to be interested in investigating ‘just another dead prostitute.’ That’s where Wiebe comes in. He starts to trace Chelsea to find out where she went and what happened to her, and he’s able to talk to people in ways that the police can’t.
Real-life PIs are also often hired to ‘vet’ prospective spouses. Especially in today’s digital world, anyone can pretend what they want to pretend; that’s how a lot of fraud happens. So, people hire a PI to do background checks on someone they’re considering marrying. In some cultures, parents will hire a PI company as a part of planning their son’s or daughter’s marriage. We see that real-life work in Tarquin Hall’s Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri series, which takes place in Delhi. Puri is a private investigator whose company does many pre-marital background checks; that’s their stock in trade. The firm does look into other cases, too, and it’s gotten a good reputation for success. But it’s really those background checks that are the regular work of the company.
You’ll notice I haven’t really mentioned murder in these examples. That’s because on a day-to-day basis, PIs don’t really work on murder cases. Their work’s more along the lines of background checks, cheating spouses, potential employees, and occasionally missing people. Fictional detectives, though, well, that’s a different story…
I know I’ve left out at lot of PIs, possibly including the ones you like best. There’s only room for so many in one post.
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Stevie Nicks’ Edge of Seventeen.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 
If I was ever to consider another marriage (mine is just fine) I’d do a complete background check first. Two women I know ended up with new husbands with a gambling addiction!
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Oh, wow, June! That is scary! I know just what you mean, too. I’m very happy in my marriage, but I would never, ever consider getting married again without a complete background check. You never know. My guess is, that’s part of a PI’s ‘bread and butter.’
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Pinky, Sandy Stern’s granddaughter in the legal fiction of Scott Turow, is now a P.I. for a small law firm. In Suspect she is tasked with finding dirt on men who have complained that the female local police chief has sexually harassed them. She is a dynamite character.
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She does sound like a fantastic character, Bill. And I really like the way that Turow has, in a way, continued Sandy Stern’s family story. That’s an interesting premise for a story, too.
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Thanks for clearing up a PI’s job. Very interesting.
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Glad you enjoyed the post, Carol. Thanks for your visit!
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Interesting, Margot. I hadn’t thought about it before, but yes, fictional PIs probably have a much more exciting life than their real-life counterparts!
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Glad you enjoyed the post, KBR. I think there are a lot of occupations (like being a PI) that are lots duller in real life than they are in fiction. Just as well, I suppose, as it probably holds readers’ attention better!
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Hi Margot,
I was very interested in your expose on the real job description of a private detective. As you describe it, it doesn’t have the romantic aspects that are associated with the fictional versions. A shame, still we can continue with the fiction version!
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Thanks, Terry,
I’m glad you thought the post was interesting. And you’re right, I think; the job of a real PI isn’t nearly as romantic as it seems in fiction. Ah, well, we still have books…
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This is a really interesting article. The vetting spouses thing sounds super intriguing. I wouldn’t do that lol 😂 but it seems that with the world heading in the direction it is, nobody wants to risk things.
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I’m glad you found this interesting, OP. You make a good point about vetting spouses, too. With the world as it is, I can see how people would think that vetting makes sense.
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There’s a little detective agency just a couple of streets away from me, and I’ve always longed to know what they do. This must be one of the quietest, most-crime free towns in the world, and the headlines in the local paper are usually something along the lines of “Local stores report shortage of umbrellas as rain continues to fall” or “Lost dog found!”, so I suspect they can’t be doing many murder investigations!
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Haha! No, I wouldn’t imagine they do a lot of murder investigations, FictionFan! But I’ve always thought it would be fascinating to ‘shadow’ an agency like that. I’d love the perspective! You’re really lucky to live in a place like that, where there those are the most important local news stories. It makes it easier to sleep at night…
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I’ve often thought that the area of PIs probably has the biggest mismatch between what they do in books and wht they do in real life.
Glad to see some of my favourites in your list. Some of the good ones at least start out showing the PIs doing routine work. I am a big fan of a different Erle Stanley Gardner series, Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. They make a great Odd Couple team!
And Mick Herron, whose Slough House books have been so succesful, also wrote a series about a PI in Oxford, Zoe Boem, and I really enjoyed those.
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You have a good point, Moira, about the mismatch between fictional PIs and real ones. I have a book by Colleen Collins and Shaun Kauffman called How to Write a Dick that’s all about writing a realistic PI, There are some really interesting points in it about what real PIs do.
Thanks for mentioning the Cool/Lam series. I haven’t read any of them in so long that I really must refresh myself. They are a great team, aren’t they? And Zoe Boem is a fascinating character. She’s enigmatic without being annoying, and I do think she’s realistic.
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I think I used to tend more towards police procedurals since they seemed more realistic than private detectives (or amateur sleuths). Nowadays, however, who knows how realistic the police procedural mysteries are.
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Now, that’s a good point, Tracy. Sometimes I wonder the same thing. When I write, I try to be as realistic as I can, but who knows? That said, I do think real-life PIs often have a very different life from what you read about in PI novels.
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