WATCHING THE DETECTIVES The Life and Times of the Private eye

Hardback. The author traces a number of leading sleuths from the real-life world of crime and detection and reveals their extraordinary range of investigatory activities - including cases of kidnapping and child abduction, blackmail and murder, counterfeiting and commercial fraud, and assorted computer and drug crimes. The first private investigators were professional bounty hunters in the USA and thieftakers operating on 'blood money' in the UK. Then, in 1851, a Glaswegian exile set up the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Chicago, and the 'private eye' was born. Over the 19th and 20th centuries - from Los Angeles to London, the PI had to adapt to the changing face of crime; in 1989 the PI came to Moscow when the first co-operative agency of private eyes was set up by former KGB men. Through first-hand interviews in Britain and America, carried out in conjunction with the Channel 4 series, the author explores in colourful detail the cases and lifestyles of many of the top practitioners, like Logan Clarke, the Los Angeles 'King of Sting', and Jay J. Armes of El Paso, Texas, who wore alloy hooks ever since his hands were blown off as a child and who operated handguns by muscle reflex. He talks to women detectives, discusses the PI in fantasy and fiction, and visits specialist outfits like the Lease Police, who track down tenants engaged in illegally sub-letting apartments in New York, and Old Flame Finders who locate - 'old flames'. Illus. + Bibliog. and Index. 229pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. F. in Nr. F. dw.