Elaine Raco Chase & Anne Wingate: Amateur Detectives (USA 1996)

From the Publisher:
Your character's no cop. But then came the crime. The police missed clues. Someone had to act. Before you could say, "Don't move!" your protagonist began nosing around.

Readers love it. They identify with your sleuth and race you to the solution. Let Amateur Detectives help you write an exciting chase. Here you'll find the information you need to keep your amateur-crime-solver novels and stories factually accurate, completely convincing. Open this book and investigate:

• why high-tech policing hasn't run off the low-tech amateur
• jobs that fit neatly with amateur sleuthing
• intuition, gossip and other information-gathering methods
• how to find out all about anyone
• how the Internet can speed your sleuth to answers
• how today's technological wonders can help your detective the law as it applies to amateur detectives gun laws, state by state citizens' arrest powers, state by state
• the Freedom of Information Act
• how real amateurs solved real crimes

Send an amateur to do a professional's job. Push your hero in deep. Jack up the danger. But play it safe on the facts. Check out Amateur Detectives and make your mystery fiction credible.

About the Authors
Elaine Raco Chase is the author of Dangerous Places and 14 other novels. She also has written articles and essays and has taught writing workshops at Skidmore College, Oglethorpe University and many writers' conferences. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

Dr. Anne Wingate has worked in law enforcement and qualified in court as a fingerprint expert. She is the author of the Howdunit guide Scene of the Crime and has published 18 mystery novels. She teaches writing in the Writer's Digest School and at the University of Utah. She lives in Salt Lake City.

Elaine Raco Chase & Anne Wingate: Amateur Detectives. A Writer's Guide to how Private Citizens Solve Criminal Cases. Edited by Roseann Biederman. Writer's Digest Books, ISBN: 089879725X (October, 1996), 232 p., $16.99.