One of the aggravating things about being a writer is that we have to appear as if we know what we're talking about, whether it's the private life of our Hollywood A-list protagonist, the mechanics of factory life, or the day to day struggles of a submarine captain. If we're going to be bright enough to make this the world our main character lives in, we'd better know how it works. Two of the most common fields a writer runs into are legal and/or medical. Even if it's not a part of our character's everyday life, every plot revolves around conflict and oftentimes those conflicts involve, to one degree or another, doctors or policemen. To aid in our endeavors, Writers Digest Books created The Howdunit Series, written by industry professionals and aimed at giving writers all the information they need to add verisimilitude to their plots.

I own two of these books, and have had them since 1997. Unfortunately, I think the shelf life on the first one I read, MISSING PERSONS, expired about 3 or 4 years after it was published.

Written by professional private investigator Fay Faron--owner of Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency in California--MISSING PERSONS is "a writer's guide to finding the lost, the abducted, and the escaped." And let's face it, the hero tracking down the kidnapped heiress, the escaped man framed for the murder of his wife, the missing luggage containing his clients entire collection of ancient Polynesian stemware, whatever the missing item or person, it just makes for good fiction.

Naturally, the internet has made this a whole lot easier and, if Faron had released this book just 10 years later, it would have been a whole lot shorter. In fact, she probably could have omitted about 200 pages of her 226-page manuscript by going into detail about MySpace, Facebook, Classmates.com, etc. Then again, those are resources useful in finding the people who aren't necessarily in hiding, and a lot of Faron's book revolves around tracking down the "scoundrels".

Personally, I hate research. If it were up to me, I'd never write about anything I didn't know well enough already, but sometimes the plot calls for those elements we just don't know anything about. And if yours calls for tracking a missing person--even in this age of Google searches--Faron's book is a huge help. Seasoned liberally with anecdotes from some of her own cases, Faron gives just about every detail a writer would need in order to establish their PI as a real living, breathing character and she does it in such an easygoing humorous manner, I loved reading MISSING PERSONS even though I knew pretty much from the beginning that a lot of the material was most likely not relevant anymore.

"Now, although many states have determined dead guys have no right to privacy, Arizona still chooses not to show you anyone's death certificate but your own. Instead of my usual eloquent lecture, including the flourishing finish where I'm arrested for disturbing the peace, I chose instead to quietly study Esther's probate file the next time I visited Phoenix."

For easier reference, the book is divided into sections, first profiling those who may be involved in a missing persons case; the misplaced person, the long lost family member, the scoundrel, the victim, the client, then the steps necessary in finding your MP, and the resources available to you; the client, public records, libraries, databases, and finally good old-fashioned gumshoeing. Relevance aside, MISSING PERSONS was very interesting, and even more entertaining.

"Before I went, the administration told me not to wear blue because that's what the prisoners wore, so I wore green, and when I got there the guard said I shouldn't have worn green because that's the color the guards dress up in. Hey, I knew that. I figured if they divided into teams for some reason--volleyball, a prison break, whatever--I wanted everybody to know I was on the side of the guards. I didn't want anybody yelling, 'Who wants the girl in the red?'"

The stories Faron shares from her own files are what make MISSING PERSONS so much fun. Not only the recall or the way she tells the stories, but their very inclusion. When I started this book, I had visions of statistic and lists of resources and phone numbers and all kinds of boring details I wouldn't remember anyway. And those things are in here, they make up chapters 11-13. But even then she tries to find a way to make the dull not so dull simply by being a good write herself.

"Bottom line, as honorable as many PIs aspire to be, in some cases, it is impossible to do a thorough investigation without breaking some rules. Or, as some call them, laws."

My only qualm about MISSING PERSONS is that, for 90% of the book, I felt like I was reading a memoir, not a writer's reference book. Yes, it was very entertaining, and maybe Faron did spend enough time talking about the writing aspect of her topic to make it work, but it was so few and far between that she even mentioned writing or protagonists or characters, that I almost began to lose the sense that that was what I was reading. I don't feel Faron really instructed on how to write a missing persons story, just gave me the tools to work it out for myself. And that's probably for the best, but with material so new to me, I'm the kind of person who learns by instruction and practice. You show me how to do it, step by step, and I'll pick it up, and then, from there, figure out what works best for me, with the same results. And as for tracking a missing person in fiction, I just don't know how confident I would be, with only this book at my fingertips, to do it in a way that convinces ME I know what I'm talking about.

My first exposure to this Howdunit Series is a positive one, but I wonder about the other volumes (I only have one other, MURDER ONE), and how up to date is the information in them over a decade after publication. Surely the details are changed, but hopefully the steps taken in turning them into fiction is the same and, if it ever comes up in my own work, I'll be able to pull it all together. For what it's worth, MISSING PERSONS was a good read and Faron was good company and an excellent teacher.

Recommended: Yes