TRUE DETECTIVES: The Real World of Today's Private Investigators

by William Parkhurst ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1988

A vivid, intensely detailed immersion into the hectic and sometimes dangerous world of four private detective agencies; by the author of How to Get Publicity (1985). Private sleuthing is big business today, Parkhurst reports, the ""tip"" of a multibillion-dollar security industry. The field encompasses giant outfits and lone wolves; in this case-jammed, procedure-oriented account, the author covers the gamut, from Vincent Parco & Associates, housed in a swank Manhattan townhouse with a suboffice of ""skip tracers""--information-diggers--stashed in a windowless room across the street, to the one-man operation of Virginia-based p.i./bounty-hunter Peter Castillo. In leapfrogging chapters, Parkhurst follows several cases of both Parco and Castillo, as well as cases of two midsized agencies: the Gotham corporate-security firm of ex-cop Joe Howard and son, with their 125 part-time security people; and the three-man N.Y.C.-based agency of former G-man Barry Silvers. The cases, too, run the gamut: from Castillo's nervy hunt after a child molester/kidnapper to Parco's innovative attempts to get the adulterous goods on a wayward wife; from Silvers' international chase after a swindling poseur passing as the ""Duke of Audley"" to Howard's ridding a Greek Manhattan landlord of unwanted peddlers. Nearly all the cases reach successful conclusions, and along the way Parkhurst works in a veritable course in sleuthing--from surveillance and debugging procedures to the relative merits of assorted high-tech weaponry. . Parkhurst's rapid case-hopping produces a bumpy, sometimes confusing ride that oscillates between awe and admiration, offering little insight into the psyche of the p.i. (for that, turn to Josiah Thompson's masterful Gumshoe, p. 607); still, packed with inside-information and colorful characters, this is a high-energy, closely observed chronicle that should interest a good many readers.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION