Certificate in Private Investigation

February 4, 2018 By Joyce Simons

Sleuthing One’s Way to the Truth

It’s about one month into the second quarter of the Certificate in Private Investigation program at the University of Washington, and we’re finally addressing the topic of uncovering the truth. Here’s a brief recap of what we learned in the first quarter (called Private Investigation & the Law) with respect to law and order:

The truth has no bearing on a trial. The burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove the elements of its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The job of the defense is to cast doubt on one or more of those elements, and thus compel a jury to render a verdict of Not Guilty.
The defendant’s job is to let his or her attorney do their job. The “what really happened” story is of no consequence and could very well remain a mystery during a trial and long after it ends.
The police investigate crimes on behalf of the prosecution. They stop investigating when they think they’ve found what they were looking for.
Private investigators, if they’re involved at all, typically work for the defense.

So whose job is it to uncover the truth?

You could argue that it’s the job of the private investigator. Private investigators tend to pick up where the police leave off. An example I often use to illustrate the role of the PI is this: let’s say the police stumble upon the body of a man with a bullet hole in his forehead. It would be easy to conclude that he died of the gunshot wound. So off they go in search of a smoking gun. And when they find one, case closed. Open and shut case, right?

Not so fast! What if the medical examiner later determines that the victim actually died of poisoning and the gunshot covered up that fact? If the defense attorney had in inkling that his client shot a dead man, he would have already dispatched a private investigator to collect evidence that his client is not guilty (which, by the way, is not the same as saying he’s innocent). If the PI is skilled enough or lucky enough (after all, by this time, the crime scene is most likely hopelessly contaminated) to find the poison that killed the shooting victim, it could throw the prosecution’s entire case into question.

In this second quarter (called Criminal Investigation & Investigative Techniques) of the PI program, we’re learning that the PI’s job is to find every fact that can be found and turn it over to the defense. End of story. But is it a satisfying story? Our instructor stressed from our first class that a critical trait of a successful PI is to withhold judgment about whodunit. Our job is to keep our eyes and ears open, get a clear accounting of exactly what happened and when (using the riveting investigative techniques she’s teaching us), and resist trying to reach a conclusion. The minute we head down that slippery slope, we’ve introduced bias into the process. Fitting together the puzzle pieces is the defense attorney’s job. And once we turn over the evidence to him or her, we wash our hands of the case and move onto the next one.

So again, whose job is it to uncover the truth? The answer, as counterintuitive as it may sound, is: no one’s. Which is why writing stories about an amateur sleuth is so deeply satisfying.

I recently shared the outline for my next novel, set in Lyon, with my editor. Lyon is a stunningly pretty city whose sizable Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In fact, I’m told that Vieux Lyon is the world’s largest Renaissance quarter after Florence, Italy. You can practically feel the shroud of history settle on your shoulders as you wind through its uneven streets and dark alleys, and at night it’s easy to imagine a sinister individual lurking just beyond the light of a street lamp.

When I told my editor that my plan is to incorporate the tone of the Old Town into the mystery that my amateur sleuth will become embroiled in, she advised me to infuse lightness into the story. So Maxime Martin, my protagonist, will be the light that chases away the shadows of lies and cover-ups.

Which called to mind ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, who abandoned the life of a banker to make his living as a beggar, slept in a wine barrel, and carried a lamp to light his way to an honest man. Exactly why he was looking for an honest man isn’t clear. (Some claim he was mad, others claim he was trying to prove that good manners are a disguise for dishonest living, and still others claim that the quote attributed to him was mistakenly translated and that he was “looking for a human.”) Whatever the answer, the image of Diogenes is the closest parallel I’ve found to an amateur sleuth. Far be it for me to answer the question, “Why is the truth important?” (beyond the simple fact that humans are meaning-making machines). But I can tell you that if, like me, you’re frustrated by the sober reality that it’s no one’s job in our justice system to uncover the truth, then there are hours upon hours of satisfaction to be found in reading about a protagonist who volunteers for that job.

Thanks this week go to Denise Scaffidi, my instructor this quarter at the UW, who is unknowingly equipping my protagonist with the critical tools he’ll need to find a killer in Lyon. Which leaves just one thing he’ll need to provide: his own lamp.

November 29, 2017 By Joyce Simons

Hard-Asses and Soft-Spoken Sleuths

A couple of months ago, I attended my first-ever conference for mystery writers. And while it was a wonderful experience in many ways, something has been nagging at me ever since. Today, while sipping a cappuccino at Starbucks alongside private investigator Sid Rubin, I figured it out: many of the male crime novelists I met boasted about the female protagonists they created as “She kicks ass and takes names,” or “She takes names and kicks ass,” or just plain “She’s a hard-ass.”

Woman carrying guns

How irritating. It made me wonder whether those writers believe that in order for a female detective to be worth writing or reading about, she has to be as tough as nails.

I maintain that a person doesn’t need to be tough to be successful at their job. As someone who earned the nickname “The Velvet Hammer” during my days in hi tech, I can attest to the fact that femininity and effectiveness are not diametrically opposed. And it’s reflected in the protagonist I created. As a friend said recently, “Maxime doesn’t seem overly concerned about his masculinity,” which was a lovely way to say that my protagonist is not a hard-ass. He doesn’t need to be in order to be a successful sleuth.

I ran my thinking past Sid, who was kind enough to let me interview him for this blog. He even paid for my cappuccino. Sid is ex-military and ex-FBI. He “packs heat” on occasion and could very well have been concealing a firearm in his leather jacket right there in Starbucks. He’s also a gentleman. If he is a hard-ass—and I can easily imagine how he would be out in the field—he didn’t so much as hint at it. He didn’t trot out a litany of tough cases he cracked or try to impress me with ham-handed references to his 25-year career as a Special Agent, his success as a private investigator, or his intimate understanding of law enforcement. He’s surprisingly soft-spoken, and when not being grilled (gently) by me, he talked openly about how much he loves his wife and looks forward to hosting pajama parties for his grandkids. He gave me no indication that a woman has to be man-like to be a successful P.I. herself. In fact, more than once he stressed that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Man in silhouette

So after a nearly three-hour conversation, I asked Sid to summarize the information he shared with me as pearls of wisdom. He suggested that some of what I was calling “pearls” might in fact be grains of sand. (Somehow, I don’t think a hard-ass would do that.) But in my opinion, they are indeed pearls because they offer a lot of value to aspiring private investigators, and some of them are life lessons too.

So without further ado, here are Sid’s pearls of wisdom…

1. Get a background in law enforcement.

According to Sid, the more experience you gain in local, county, state, or federal law enforcement, the more it will benefit your career as a P.I. There are some things—like interviewing techniques, usage of proprietary databases, and development of information sources—that can be taught in a classroom but are significantly enhanced by field work experience. Sid should know because after leaving the FBI, he taught Criminal Justice at community colleges and trained police officers.

2. Beware of a badge-heavy attitude.

If someone accuses you of being “badge-heavy,” it means you’ve adopted a persona of being powerful because you have a badge or license. It’s not a compliment; it’s a warning against assuming you have to assert power because you’re licensed to investigate.

Magnum PI with a gun

And that includes waving a gun around. Case in point: Sid has a weapon permit but he carries his firearm only when he’s in a dangerous place where he has a valid concern about his personal safety.

3. There’s an easy way and a hard way.

I’ll bet Sid has repeated that phrase countless times when he’s pursuing someone or just conducting an interview. For instance, the easy way might be sharing information with him; the hard way would be sharing it with the prosecuting attorney.

He shared a hilarious story in which he had to search a house for a fugitive. Though he was told by the other Special Agents that the house was “cleared,” he was surprised to come face-to-face with a human posterior sticking out from a shelf above the washer and dryer in the laundry room. He directed the suspect to come down from the shelf, but to no avail. Sid informed the fugitive that he could come down the easy way or the hard way—the decision was his. Still no response from the protuberant posterior. So without warning, Sid climbed on a chair, grabbed the man by his belt and the waist of his pants, jerked him off the shelf, and let him bounce onto the laundry machines where he was handcuffed.

Easy way or hard way. You could say that the man found out the hard way just what the hard way was.

4. Seek cooperation, not confrontation.

When interviewing someone, the trick is to get them to want to give you the information instead of trying to force it out of them. Or, to refer back to an earlier Sid-ism, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

Magnum PI throwing a punch

People are often willing to cooperate for a variety of reasons: they want to be involved, it’s the right thing to do, they have something to gain, etc. Part of the trick is to figure out which one applies to the person you’re interviewing so that you can appeal to their motivation.

5. Before conducting an interview, define your goals and desired outcome.

What are you hoping to learn from an interview? Why interview one person instead of another? It saves time and effort if you’re purposeful in your approach to interviewing people. It also helps—a lot—if you’ve been trained in interviewing techniques (which Sid learned at the FBI, which trains and re-trains its agents).

Knowing what you’re after can also help you engage in the right kind of subterfuge when necessary. “An investigator will often throw things on the table to mislead a subject and get a verbal, facial, or physical reaction,” he said. He gives himself an “above average” rating at knowing when someone is lying but I’d venture that he’s way above average because he knows what he’s looking for and how to interpret someone’s reactions.

6. Establish convincing pretexts.

“A lot of P.I. work is assisted by developing pretexts,” said Sid. Before he goes into the field on a specific case, he establishes pretexts that he uses when asking people for information. For example, when looking for a stolen boat, he posed as a salesman of GPS technology to interview people at various marinas. It was a lot gentler and more effective than flashing a license and saying, “I’m a P.I. looking for information about a stolen boat.” He got the information he wanted, and successfully located the boat.

Magnum PI in disguise

“You should have the ability to be a chameleon. If people don’t buy into your pretext, walk away and asks someone else,” he advised. “Don’t confront, don’t argue. Accept what you have and work around it.”

7. Consider alerting local authorities before you start surveillance.

Sid often calls the local police before he conducts a surveillance to give them a heads-up rather than risk neighbors calling the police to report a suspicious man spying on or stalking someone. “Some P.I.s operate in their own vacuum world,” said Sid. So don’t be one of them.

Magnum PI with camera

8. Develop your network.

Sid participates in a local network of retired law enforcement personnel who do P.I. work, as well as a worldwide network of about 775 retired FBI agents. Most of his work comes from law firms, large corporations when a matter is too sensitive for their own security teams, and referrals.

But what if you’re just starting out without law enforcement contacts or enough word-of-mouth referrals to get work? Sid recommends joining the Pacific Northwest Association of Investigators (P.N.A.I.) and WALI (Washington Association of Legal Investigators). “They’re great networking tools for someone setting out on a P.I. career to meet other investigators. And they’ll also help you find out what you can reasonably charge,” he said.

It also helps to develop contacts in the security industry (security departments in corporations, security firms that companies outsource work to, firms that offer private security, etc.), which can help you establish a client base.

9. The way you spend your time depends on the type of case you’re handling.

Not all private investigators drive fancy sports cars, wear disguises, and spend their days chasing down suspects and dodging bullets. Depending on the case, you might spend more time in front of a computer than in the field.

On a typical day, Sid reads his email, decides which of about 12-15 active cases to work on, prepares a schedule of which leads to follow, plans which locations to go to, and does online research in proprietary databases (TLO, IRB, and LexisNexis) available to lawyers and private investigators. “Proprietary databases are constantly being updated for accuracy so it pays to use them,” said Sid. “Public ones can contain misinformation that wastes a lot of time.”

10. The documented results prove the worth of the investigation.

The deliverable by a P.I. to their client is always a report of the results, which respond to the goals established by the client. Sid won’t invoice a client until he has a written report (or an oral report if that’s what the client has asked for instead) to accompany the invoice.

BONUS: Don’t be misled by the private investigators you see on TV.

This isn’t actually one of Sid’s pearls, but it came across loud and clear during our conversation. He listed the qualities of a successful P.I. as:

The ability to be a chameleon (see above)
The ability to fight boredom (especially when conducting a surveillance)
Honesty
Ethics
Knowledge of the law (i.e., what you can and cannot do legally)
Knowledge of people
“Skillcraft” (how to perform various aspects of the job)

What you often see on TV are criminals who are clueless to the fact that they’re being watched (“People involved in criminal activity look for clues that they’re under surveillance,” said Sid), and “bumper locking” by investigators who follow a target vehicle by starting their engines at the same moment as the suspect and follow from a ridiculously close distance. Which just speaks to skillcraft—learn the skills you need because, as Sid notes, “It’s not like on TV.”

Thanks this week go to the incredibly kind and generous Sid Rubin, who made this blog post possible. I’d include a photo of him but when he wouldn’t let me use my “spy dictaphone” to record our conversation, I didn’t dare ask if I could blow his cover by taking his photo. So I’ll just leave you with this image and let you imagine what he looks like!

P.I. in silhouette

October 30, 2017 By Joyce Simons

A Brief History of Private Investigation

Earlier this month, I started attending classes for the Certificate in Private Investigation at the University of Washington. It was recommended to me by crime novelist and program graduate Ingrid Thoft, and I’m told by the organizers that it’s the only program of its kind in the U.S. My goal is to learn the investigative techniques that my protagonist, amateur detective Maxime Martin, will need to catch a killer. But I’m learning so much more and we’re just three classes into the program.

For instance, did you know that in the criminal justice system…

The truth has no bearing on a trial. The burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove the elements of its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The job of the defense is to cast doubt on one or more of those elements, and thus compel a jury to render a verdict of Not Guilty. The defendant’s job in all this is to let his or her attorney do their job. The “what really happened” story is of no consequence and could very well remain a mystery during a trial and long after it ends.
The police investigate crimes on behalf of the prosecution. Private investigators, if they’re involved at all, typically work for the defense.
The police stop investigating when they think they’ve found what they were looking for. If they believe a victim died from a gunshot wound and they find a smoking gun, they call it a day. But what if the victim actually died of poisoning and the gunshot just covered up that fact? Private investigators tend to pick up where the police leave off, almost like a murder of crows picking over the detritus of a crime scene. Find the poison, and the prosecution’s entire case can be thrown into question.

The tagline for the UW program is: Uncover the Facts and Expose the Truth. Which feels so poignant now that I know what I just listed above. It’s not the job of the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the judge, or the jury to uncover the truth; that job belongs to the private investigator. Writing novels that lay out a crime, untangle a mystery, and expose the truth just got a whole lot more satisfying.

A happy consequence of learning about the function of private investigation is that I started wondering how it got its start. (Being a lover of history, digging into the origins of something is an activity I relish.) I always assumed that it all began with Sherlock Holmes.

How wrong I was!

Eugène François Vidocq

The first known private investigation agency was opened in 1833 by a Frenchman, Eugène François Vidocq, who accepted money in exchange for solving crimes.

Eugène François Vidocq

He made the first plaster casts of shoe prints. He ran a printing company that created indelible ink. And, like the kindly Bishop Myriel in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, he didn’t turn in people who committed crimes motivated by real need.

Allen Pinkerton

Seventeen years later in the U.S., Allen Pinkerton started his own detective agency and rose to fame when he foiled a plot to assassinate President-Elect Abraham Lincoln.

Allen Pinkerton

At one point, the Pinkerton Detective Agency had more agents than the U.S. Army and was consequently outlawed in some states because it could be hired as a “private army.” Which is exactly what happened when it was hired as strikebreakers and bounty hunters (of Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, among others). Its motto was We Never Sleep, which inspired the term, “private eye.”

But what about private investigators in fiction? Surely, they can be traced back to Sherlock, can’t they?

Wrong again! The beginnings of detective fiction can be traced all the way back to the Bible. Here’s a brief rundown of what you can read about in detail in a Wikipedia article on detective fiction:

Ancient literature

Read the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders, and it’ll sound a bit like a case of he-said-she-said. But when Daniel inserts himself and cross-examines the two witnesses, the truth is uncovered, the false accusers are condemned to death, and justice reigns. Similar stories of detection can be found in Oedipus Rex by Sophocles in which Oedipus uses cross-examination to uncover the murder of King Laius (never mind that his efforts implicate himself in the murder), The Three Apples narrated by Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights (which could be subtitled Two Fall Guys and a Guilty Slave), and Gong’an fiction of Ancient China (in which the detective is the local magistrate).

Early modern literature and beyond

Not surprisingly, another Frenchman pops up in history as a pioneer in private investigation.

Voltaire

In 1747, Voltaire’s novella Zadig ou la Destinée (Zadig, or the Book of Fate) appeared and seems to have influenced countless mystery novelists who followed, from Edgar Allen Poe (who is credited with having established the detective fiction genre with The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841), to Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes and his trusted chronicler, Dr. Watson), to Queen of Crime Agatha Christie, who presided over the Golden Age of Detective Fiction during the 1920s and 1930s.

In the years that followed, hardboiled novels replaced classic whodunits in popularity (think Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, etc.), until the 21^st century when Michael Collins ushered in the PI series of the Modern Age.

For me personally, given all the authors, genres, and subgenres through the ages, there’s something irresistible about reading a great cozy mystery, and it has nothing to do with drinking tea (which I don’t drink) or owning cats (which I’m allergic to). What lies at the heart of a “cozy” is a mystery that needs solving without the overdone window dressing of graphic sex or violence, and takes the reader along for the adventure.

If I’m lucky, my KNITTING DETECTIVE series will one day appear on the list of “Detective debuts and swansongs” at the bottom of the Wikipedia article on detective fiction. And then I can say it all started with A SCANDAL IN NICE and the ending is TBD because Maxime will be making stops in Lyon (in book two) and Versailles (in book three) before taking up his beautifully crafted knitting needles in-between unraveling a few skeins of luxurious yarns and unraveling his next big mystery.

Thanks this week go to fellow student at the UW and published mystery author Marianne Harden, who is filling my commute with invaluable advice about finding representation, and who has become my partner in crime in exercising our powers of observation as writers to decipher the private lives of our instructors. (But let’s keep that last factoid just between us!)

August 23, 2017 By Joyce Simons

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

These days, all my social activities with friends who are parents of school-age kids have been put on hold while they gear up for the new school year. If I had kids, I’d be swinging from the rafters at the thought of having my weekdays (or part of them, anyway) back to myself. And then I thought that I do have kids; they just happen to be of the canine variety. And it got me thinking: is it really impossible to teach old dogs new tricks?

I have one new dog, who’s six years old and highly trainable. No problem with new tricks there. And I have one older dog, who’s twelve and has never been trainable, not even by the best trainer I know. Getting her to sit on command reminds me of the scene in Skyfall when the villain, played by Javier Bardem, bemoans the senselessness of Bond’s refusal to do what he wants and ends by lamenting, “It’s exhausting.” In fact, I often try to mimic his accent when I say the same thing to my “senior” dog.

Javier Bardem in SKYFALL

And then I realized that transitioning to a new career means I have to send myself back to school and be open to new tricks. Luckily for me, I love learning new things. In just the past month, I’ve signed myself up for three new learning experiences:

Survival strategies, which combines practical self-defense techniques with tactical handheld weaponry. I do not like guns, though I enjoy target practice. And I loathe knives except to slice, dice, chop, julienne, and otherwise cut food. I’m more of an air horn girl. One blast of that thing should send an intruder careening toward the exit signs. But it’s not a suitable accessory for a small purse. Better to know how to wriggle out of an attacker’s grip and run to safety brandishing pepper spray if need be. It’s something that my protagonist, Maxime Martin, had better know how to do too, sans pepper spray.
The University of Washington’s Certificate in Private Investigation. At the recommendation of crime novelist Ingrid Thoft, to whom I’ll forever be grateful for turning me onto this program, I applied for admission and I’ll be sitting in the classroom this fall. I can’t wait to learn how to “uncover the facts and expose the truth,” according to the program description, because Maxime will need this know-how for the sequel to my first novel, A SCANDAL IN NICE.
The Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, which was recommended to me by Hallie Ephron, author of my favorite how-to book, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel. This conference starts in a couple of weeks, about the same time that my friends’ kids will be facing their first day of school.

I’ve never been to a writers’ conference, so I don’t know exactly what to expect. And being reasonably new to mystery writing, I had never heard of the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference. So I googled it and found a blog post by mystery writer Katherine Bolger Hyde. What a find— and what an inspiration! She describes how she struggled for ten years to launch her career as a mystery writer. And then, in the space of about ten months, she applied for a scholarship to this conference, won the scholarship, attended the conference, met literary agent Kimberley Cameron, became her client, and ended up with a two-book deal.

It didn’t take this “old dog” (though I prefer “young pup,” but let’s be real) more than ten minutes to follow the scent to the Book Passage website, sniff out information about the scholarship, send in my submission, think good thoughts, and prepare to wait for a reply.

And last week I got the news: I am the recipient of this year’s William Gordon scholarship! WOOT!!!

So while my friends’ kids gather their school supplies and agonize over what they’ll wear on their first day of school, I’ll be doing the same things. Only I’ll be jetting down to San Francisco to begin my schooling at this four-day conference.

Thanks to William C. Gordon for funding the scholarship, Kathryn Petrocelli at Book Passage for her delightful emails, and Hallie Ephron for her suggestion that I check out this conference. But most of all, thank you to someone I’ve never met or had contact with—Katherine Bolger Hyde—for taking the time to blog about her experience and inspire someone a thousand miles away to follow in her footsteps.

San Francisco, here I come!