127 - Mistakes Writers Make about PIs

Episode 127 - Mistakes Writers Make about PIs and How to Avoid Them with Patrick Hoffman

April 5, 2022

This week on The Indy Author Podcast, Patrick Hoffman discusses MISTAKES WRITERS MAKE ABOUT PIs AND HOW TO AVOID THEM. He discusses aspects of PI work, including the fact that a PI’s car is their second home ... the techniques of the in-person cold call ... the ethics of PI work ... the importance of keeping the conversation going and of not taking “no” for an answer ... the fact that crime writers should never rely on “Scooby-Doo” confessions ... dealing with the trauma of PI work ... and how you should never have an interrogation scene set in a dark room.

Patrick Hoffman has been a private investigator for 17 years. He started his career in San Francisco as a private investigator before becoming an investigator in the homicide unit of the San Francisco Public Defender's office. For the last seven years he's been working on wrongful conviction cases for the New York civil rights firm, Neufeld, Scheck & Brustin. His first three crime thrillers have all been selected as top ten thrillers of the year by the Wall Street Journal, and his second book, EVERY MAN A MENACE was selected as a top ten crime thriller of the past decade by Crimereads. He lives in Brooklyn.

"Working on these criminal cases is scarring in a way. When I was at the public defender's office and I was in the homicide unit, just working on murder every single day of the year, you open a file, you're reading about the murder, you're talking about the murder, you go looking at pictures of the crime scene. It's just every day. And eventually, I really did have PTSD in the end." —Patrick Hoffman

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Due to technical issues, a transcript of this episode is not available.

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Links

Other "Mistakes Writers Make" episodes:

Episode 067 - Mistakes Writers Make about the FBI and How to Avoid Them with Jerri Williams

Episode 050 - Mistakes Writers Make about First Responders and How to Avoid Them with Ken Fritz

Episode 046 - Mistakes Writers Make about Coroners ... and How to Avoid Them with Jennifer Graeser Dornbush

Episode 035 - Mistakes Writers Make about Police Procedure … and How to Avoid Them with Bruce Robert Coffin

Episode 012 - Top Firearms Mistakes Writers Make … and How to Avoid Them with Chris Grall

Patrick's links:

http://www.patrickhoffmanbooks.com/

https://twitter.com/pdchoffman

From the episode intro:

J. Thorn’s How To Book Challenge https://howtobookchallenge.com/

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