Everyone who finds out that I am a private investigator as well as an author asks me two things:
- Is the work fun?
- What do you do as a PI?
You might be surprised by the range of activities a PI carries out in any given year. Some investigators specialize in only one or two areas, but most of us are generalists who undertake almost any worthwhile job that comes along. I have done all of the following:
- Assist attorneys in preparing court cases. In civil cases, we might work for either side. In criminal cases, PIs almost always work for the defense. (The police have their own investigators on staff; they are called detectives.) We locate participants, document alleged crime scenes, and interview witnesses. In short, we do anything that’s needed for the case. And by the way, it’s our job to be impartial, not to advocate for any side. Sometimes we end up delivering bad news about witnesses or evidence to our attorney clients; it’s the attorney’s job to decide what to do with the court case.
- Child custody cases, where we determine who is actually caring for the children and if they are in a safe and healthy environment.
- Cases of business fraud, where we document shady behavior such as secret meetings with competitors and sales of “exclusive” franchises to multiple buyers in the same areas.
- Insurance fraud cases, where we sleuth out the “disabled” who claim they are too physically injured to work but can still miraculously go snowboarding or load cases of beer into their trucks.
- Counterfeit merchandise or stolen merchandise cases, where we often pose as buyers to document the transactions and get the physical evidence.
- Locations of individuals for a multitude of reasons, often happy reasons like inheritance or long-lost friends or relatives. We always check out the client carefully in locate cases, because we do not want to facilitate a stalker; and while we are happy to pass on the client’s contact information and relay any message back, we will not deliver the located person’s contact information to the client without permission from the located person.
- Workplace investigations, where we do our best to document internal theft, lack of security, or harassment issues within companies.
- Difficult process service, where the individual to be served court papers has been evading normal service. I won’t reveal our secrets here, but my partner Molly is a positive wizard at serving nearly anyone.
- Deal with paranoid schizophrenics. Sadly, some potential clients who call us for help soon reveal themselves to be mentally ill and are usually off their medications. In these cases, we try to reassure them that government agents are not camped out in their back yards, aliens are not beaming x-rays at their heads, and/or their neighbors are not breaking into their apartments at all hours of the day and night. We recognize that these individuals are truly frightened. We also try to find a relative, medical professional, or appropriate social service to help get the person back into proper care.
- And yes, we do occasionally surveil suspected cheating spouses and domestic partners, but only in cases where there is no history whatsoever of violence or threats between the two parties. Just like locates, we carefully check out the client because we do not want to facilitate a stalker or promote aggression. Some of these cases have to do with divorcing spouses suspecting the other of hiding assets prior to a divorce being finalized. And I’m happy to report that in many cases, we find the person in question to be innocent of the accusation.
Unlike PIs on television, in real life private investigators have no special powers. We cannot legally break into buildings, trespass on private property (except in certain cases of process serving), or threaten or intimidate anyone, and we certainly don’t run around shooting guns, although some PIs carry weapons for protection. In general, we have to be even more careful than the average citizen not to break any laws, because we are more likely to be sued or prosecuted for any violations. I wrote more about what the life is really like in my newest little ebook, SO YOU WANT TO BE A PI?
Is investigation work fun? Well, no, not generally speaking, unless you consider reading endless documents, writing reports, and sitting in a cold car for hours on end to be a real hoot.
Is it dangerous? Yes, sometimes it can be a little creepy, but a smart investigator always has a cell phone handy and meets shady characters in coffee shops, not in dark alleys.
Is it interesting? Most of the time, yes. Even if I don’t care about the outcome of a case, I always meet colorful characters along the way. Investigation work is a great sideline to my other job and true avocation: mystery author.
The timing couldn’t have been better for me to come across this post. My first book is romantic suspense, for my second I’d like to write a mystery. Natually the hero is a former cop who is now a PI. Too cliche? 🙂 Anyway, thanks.
Hi, MaryAnn, glad to be of service. Nope, your idea is not too cliche at all–a very high percentage of private investigators are former law enforcement officials. They come from the military (MPs) and park rangers as well as regular police. It can be a bit of a disadvantage, however, because cops are used to having all sorts of resources (like criminal databases, etc) that they can use that we PIs do not have access to. Plus, cops can “bully” suspects into cooperating with threats of arrest, etc, whereas we PIs have to find other ways to do it (like charming and “befriending” them).
Informative post. Thank you! I bookmarked it for future reference.
Hello Pamela,
I’m glad I found your site! I’ve been trying to do research about PI’s for my current novel. My main character hires the PI to investigate her family. There is some strange behavior when it comes to their recently deceased father’s bed and breakfast, including ownership, finances, etc.
My question is, would the PI be allowed to look into the father’s financial statements if the main character gave the paperwork to him?
Would the PI be able to bug her family’s house?
What type of equipment do you usually use besides cameras?
Thank you for your time!
Kayla Hunt
Author of Caged Eagles
This is great post.It is about of pi and their duty and personal life.This book is properly investigation like that.
I am writing a Dissertation for college and am looking for information on if police departments use Private Investigators on cases of run away children and parents, can you point me in the right direction for this information?
Thank you,
Beatrice
Beatrice, it all depends on the individual police department. Generally speaking, police do not always cooperate with private investigators, because in court cases we are working on the side of the defense, which means investigating police procedures, so we often have to question officers. But some short-staffed police departments do hire PIs to help with cases, and others may simply say, we don’t have the manpower to pursue that, we recommend that you hire a private investigator. In the case of runaways, we will pass information from clients to the runaway if we find them, and report back on condition and reaction, but often we will not give the location of the runaway to the client, because we cannot know the history of the situation. For example, some runaway kids are fleeing abuse at home, and we don’t want to facilitate the abuser finding them.
Hello Ma’am Pamela, I’m very thankful that you made this site of yours because it is really beneficial for me especially because I’m currently writing a novel. But may I ask you some questions like does the private investigators do look for the missing ones? Like for example, you had this one relative that you hadn’t meet again for so many years and now you want to know where she is, is the P.I the right one to ask help for? Do they do that kind of stuff? That’s all, thank you! Hope you’ll reply 🙂
So sorry not to have found this comment earlier; obviously I don’t check my website comments often enough. Yes, private investigators often look for people who are missing for all sorts of reasons. We do have to be careful, however, not to facilitate a stalker, so we always check first to see if there’s a history between the person seeking someone and that “lost” person, and our rule is that we will pass whatever the client wants to the individual when we find him or her, but we don’t give location information to the client. So, in other words, it’s up to the “lost” (now found) person to decide whether he or she wants to communicate. We do, however, report on the condition of the individual and that person’s initial reaction to the information that someone is looking for them.
Hi, just wondering about one thing – what happens when both sides of a conflict approach the same PI? Take for example a couple suspecting each other of cheating. Do you side the one who approaches you first and if so, what do you do when the second side approaches you?
Like anyone in the legal business, PIs should NEVER work for both sides on the same case. Ethical PIs don’t really “take sides” (although sometimes attorneys would like us to); we just agree to do our best to document what is truly going on. What the client does with our report is his or her business. But my partner and I rarely do “cheating spouses” cases, because 1) we are in a state with no-fault, 50%-50% property split divorce laws; and 2) we never take a cause in which there is a history of abuse or a previous no-contact order between the parties, because that might be facilitating a stalker and encourage violence, even murder. But in the rare event that we did take a case with one party as the client and then the other approached us, we would simply say we couldn’t take that case without revealing that we had the other party as a client. If there are complaints, PIs that do unethical things are apt to lose their licenses. And they should.
Some people hire private investigators so routinely that it would be difficult for them to imagine completing a project-whether it’s personal or professional-without one. Private investigators often perform background checks of individuals or companies for law firms, corporations and private citizens.
Several PIs I know said they provide their summary report to both parties, but then I ran across one that only reported back to the person that paid them, not the interviewee. Is that unusual? Thank you, Pamela.
That decision is usually up to the person who hires the PI, especially if it’s an attorney preparing for a court case. When PIs work for attorneys, we provide all information to them, and they do with it whatever they want.