How a book made me start my career as a Private Investigator.
Here’s a fact: being a Private Investigator means reading. Lots and lots of reading. You’ll read everything. News articles, case files, court reports, boring mail, the occasional interesting death threat or hate letter, and emails. The life of a PI is nothing if not filled with the dread of drowning in a flood of words daily. I say all this to say that reading is a thing that is less often for pleasure than for work.
I occasionally read for fun these days. I get to the odd memoir and a few novels. I’ve been steadily aching my way through Room to Dream, a memoir by David Lynch. A friend, sensing that PI’s are only capable of reading one genre, recommended about six separate true crime books to me which I promptly forgot. I’ve spent the better part of a decade looking into the worst parts of criminal humanity, why the heck would I want to read more?
I took a quick look at my bookshelf one day and saw a mainstay of my collection. Among the authorship collection of a college-aged shut-in (a loud “ugh” to Voltaire, Kerouac, Camus) sits my most prized literary possession: The complete Sherlock Holmes. One of those front of the bookstore editions reprinted about ten times a year. All fifty-six short stories, all four novels. Growing up in South Central Los Angeles gave me no frame of reference for Victorian England but I read every page.
Next to it sits the favorite among favorites and the one that drove me to the occupation I now work today. It was sitting on my bed pillow one morning on a rainy day in the 5th grade. It was Sherlock’s Logic by William Neblett. Imagine getting thrown into a mystery written expressly for you by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Then imagine that you had access to a handwritten guide on how to solve the exact mystery utilizing the methods of the worlds greatest (fictional) detective. That’s essentially what this book is and it drove me up the wall with glee when I was a young boy. I can be a detective? With a book? Screw a Nintendo or a magic kit, this was the only thing I needed. I sunk myself into the pages to read sections on “Modus Tollens” and “Modus Ponens”. Universal Insatiation, and Disjunctive Syllogism. None of this made sense of that age. Not gonna lie, still doesn’t. But man did it make me want to solve an unsolvable murder.
A part of me yearns for that book again to feel new to me. I wonder daily why books like this aren’t more often acknowledged for their practical wisdom and knowledge as well as fun. Nerdy ol’ me thinks a book titled “Solving mysteries is fun!” for kids would sell like hotcakes on black Friday. Every kid out there dressed in their trench coat and fedora, stalking their neighborhoods solving whodunits and using their best Dashiell Hammett impressions. Sounds fun to me. Should sound a little bit interesting to everyone.
To me, a book outlining the methodology to solve crimes like Sherlock Holmes was like finding a book that taught you how to be Batman. It made me want to be a Private Investigator. Hopefully, a recreation or addition to the genre would make someone else out there want to be their own hero.
