[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-116340-en":3,"doc-seo-116340-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":90},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},116340,137441390410,"Hazel","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/2000252f4ab5702993?_k=1776741390130283984",2,"Literature","How to Write a Dick - Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman - A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths","How to Write a Dick provides a practical, research-driven guide for crafting believable 21st-century private investigator sleuths and stories, grounded in the authors’ real experience in the PI field. The book addresses investigative practice as well as the tools, technology, and online resources that shape modern professional work, helping writers avoid outdated characters and methods. It also sets expectations, clarifies scope and limits, and organizes core topics from PI roles to case work, crime scenes, evidence, data gathering, and writers’ reference materials.","Praise for How to Write a Dick  \n“Forget Google and Bing. When you need to research PI work, go to the experts, Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman: they live it, they teach it, they write it. How to Write a Dick is the best work of its kind I’ve ever come across because it covers the whole spectrum in an entertaining style that will appeal to layman and lawmen alike. This will be the industry standard for years to come.”  \n—Reed Farrel Coleman, three-time Shamus Award winner for Best PI Novel of the Year and author of Hurt Machine  \n“How to Write a Dick is a gift to crime fiction authors everywhere, a comprehensive and no-nonsense compendium of information, analysis and thought-provoking writing prompts that will help you create your own 21st century shamus with confidence and class. An absolute must for the library of any PI writer!”  \n—Kelli Stanley, critically acclaimed author of City of Dragons and the Miranda Corbie series  \n“What every wanna-be sleuth needs: a revolver, a bottle of scotch, a trusty sidekick, and this book.”  \n—Mario Acevedo, author of Werewolf Smackdown  \n“If you want authenticity in creating a fictional private investigator for your stories, then this is a must-have reference book. Its authors, Colleen and Shaun, are living breathing PIs with years of actual experience in the PI game.”  \n—R.T. Lawton, 25 years on the street as a federal special agent and author of 4 series in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nHow to Write a Dick A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nCopyright © 2011 by WIN, Inc.  \nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.  \nHow to Write a Dick is intended to guide you as an author and is not intended to be instructional in nature as a course for private investigations, nor does it offer legal advice. All content is purely descriptive and Highlands Investigations, Colleen Collins and Shaun Kaufman, are not liable for information derived from this course being used in the course of writing about or conducting private investigations.  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nTo “Bingo” Huttner, who hired us for our first job  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nTable of Contents  \nOverview  \n1: What Is a PI?  \n2: The 21st-Century PI  \n3: Marketing, Managing and Equipping a PI Business  \n4: Locates, Interviews, Trash Hits and Surveillance  \n5: Crime Scenes, Homicides and DNA  \n6: Guns, Lies and Numbers  \n7: Digging for Data and Wrapping Up a Case  \nAppendix A: Writers’ Questions and PIs’Answers  \nAppendix B: Sample Cases  \nGumshoe Glossary  \nLike This Book?  \n[OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com)  \nOverview  \nThe private eye genre has come a long way, baby, with new subgenres—from teenage PIs to vampire gumshoes to geriatric sleuths—attracting new readers every year. Although it can be safely said that all fictional sleuths, or dicks, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, are thinking machines, depending on their powers of observation, analysis and curiosity, the 21st century has opened up a brave new world of investigative technology, tools and Internet resources that would have made Sherlock Holmes weep with joy.  \nUnfortunately, most writers are not aware of these state-of-the-art developments that shape today’s professional private dick, which sometimes leave writers floundering with impossible and antiquated devices, characters and methods in stories. Which is why we wrote How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of RealLife Sleuths, whose material we culled from our working a combined 14 yea","cbCaidQYHckHhMPg","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidQYHckHhMPg","pdf",1428701,1,235,"English","en",105,"# Overview\n## What Is a PI?\n## The 21st-Century PI\n## Marketing, Managing and Equipping a PI Business\n## Locates, Interviews, Trash Hits and Surveillance\n## Crime Scenes, Homicides and DNA\n## Guns, Lies and Numbers\n## Digging for Data and Wrapping Up a Case\n# Appendix A: Writers’ Questions and PIs’Answers\n# Appendix B: Sample Cases\n# Gumshoe Glossary\n# Like This Book?","[{\"question\":\"What does How to Write a Dick help writers do?\",\"answer\":\"It helps authors create authentic, compelling 21st-century private investigator sleuth characters and stories, using practical knowledge drawn from real PI work.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the book approach modern private investigation compared with older fiction?\",\"answer\":\"It highlights investigative technology, tools, and Internet resources that influence professional private work today, aiming to prevent stories from relying on antiquated methods.\"},{\"question\":\"Does the book provide legal advice or instructions for real investigations?\",\"answer\":\"No. The text is descriptive and intended as guidance for authors, not as a course for private investigations or for legal advice.\"}]","How to Write a Dick - 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