The American Library Association‘s Booklist Online’s Reference Editor Rebecca Vnuk has designated Guns, Gams and Gumshoes to be “Web Crush of the Week” this week as part of their Mystery Month celebration.  Thank you Ms. Vnuk and Booklist Online. An excerpt of the write-up is below:

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes is a blog geared primarily to mystery, suspense and thriller writers, but readers will find plenty to enjoy here as well.  The contributors know what they’re talking about:  Shaun Kaufman is  a trial attorney specializing in personal injury, criminal defense and business litigation, and Colleen Collins is a novelist. They’re both licensed private investigators, to boot.

To read the rest of the write-up, click here.

To celebrate being the “Web Crush of the Week,” we’ll post links to some of our recent readers’ favorite articles, below.  To read an article, click the link.

Top Mistakes Writers Make When Depicting Crime Scenes

Flashlights are dandy for private eyes in stories, but many of today’s PIs are also using flashlight apps on their smartphones!

Story Foibles in Private Eye Fiction

Get a Bad Review? Three Tips to Minimize It on the Internet

Private Eye Stories That Get It Right

Answering Writer’s Question: Are PIs and Cops Compatible?

Answering Writers’ Questions: What Records Can PIs Legally Obtain?

Private Investigators and Murder Cases

Shaun Kaufman writes about civil and criminal litigation issues, and sometimes basketball, at www.shaunkaufman.com.

Additional Articles of Interest

As Ms. Vnuk mentioned in her write-up, one of the Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s authors is Denver, Colorado, trial attorney Shaun Kaufman. Below are some of recent articles he’s posted on his site — as you can see, he’s also a die-hard basketball fan. To read an article, click on the link:

What Personal Injury Lawyers Can Learn from Dwayne Wade and LeBron James

Copyright Trolling: Don’t Be a Victim

Miami Heat-Bostom Celtics Match Mirrors DA-Defense Contest

Remembering Military Justice

Have a great week, Writing PIs

Related articles

• Answering Writers’ Questions: What Records Can PIs Get via Databases or by Phone? (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Private Eye News: From Training Programs to Gadgets (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Military Justice, Historical Research and Contest to Win a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate (writingpis.wordpress.com)

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it?  When conducting a surveillance in the country, don’t act like a city slicker.  But if you’re a citified PI who rarely, if ever, conducts rural surveillances, maybe you’re unaware that dressing in jeans, a flannel shirt and boots only goes so far if you’re also driving a spanking-clean pick-up.  Same applies if you’re a writer writing a PI-character doing a surveillance in the country — some of these tips might come in handy in your story.

Today, we’re sharing a few of our slides from a recent presentation we made at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference on Surveillance 101.

Rural Surveillances: Don’t Look Like a City Slicker

How to Not Blend in on Surveillance

On the other hand, if you’re writing a humorous character, make him/her not blend in!

Win a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate: Check out contest by clicking here.

Have a great week, Writing PIs

Related articles

• Surveillance Rule Number 1: Blend In (writingpis.wordpress.com)

Shaun Kaufman and Colleen Collins, the Writing PIs

Today at Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes we have a smattering of links to share, from Shaun Kaufman‘s educational article on military justice to tips for historical research.  Last, there’s a fun contest running through June 4, 2012 where the lucky winner gets a $10 Amazon gift certificate!

“Remembering Military Justice” by Shaun Kaufman

This article outlines key differences between civilian and military criminal defense. To read, click here.

Historical Research Tips

Below are some articles on researching history — handy info for writers, researchers and those interested in investigating people and events in the past. To read an article, click on the link.

Tips from a PI: Historical Research Sites for Your Stories by Colleen Collins

State Historical Society of North Dakota: Research Tips for Beginners

History Detectives: Historical Research Checklist

From Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes: Historical Research Links

Win a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate!

Today through June 4, 2012, Mrs. Mommy Booknerd’s Book Reviews is running a contest for The Zen Man by author-private investigator (and Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s co-author) Colleen Collins.  For more information on how to enter the contest, click link below (hint: if you post a comment to this Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s blog, you get bonus points!):

Contest: Win a $10 Amazon gift certificate

Have a great week, Writing PIs

Today Novel Rockets, one of the Writer’s Digest 101 Top Websites for Writers, has posted an article by Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s PI, Colleen Collins: “Top 5 Mistakes Writers Make at a Crime Scene.”  Besides offering a PI’s perspective on crime scene faux pas, Colleen interviewed other experts for this article: Joe Giacalone, veteran NYPD detective sergeant and commanding officer of their Cold Case Squad and author of  The Criminal Investigative Function; David Swinson, retired Washington, DC, detective and author of A Detailed Man; and Denver criminal defense attorney Shaun Kaufman.

Below we post an excerpt.  To read it in its entirety, click on the “To read the full article, click here” link at the bottom of the article.

Top 5 Mistakes Writers Make at a Crime Scene

by Colleen Collins

Incorrectly describing a crime scene can hurt the credibility of a story

Next to confessions, crime scenes contain the most first-hand evidence explaining the who, what and whys of a crime.  Unfortunately, sometimes writers get aspects of a crime scene wrong, which puts a dent in the credibility of a story.

David Swinson, a retired Washington, DC, detective and author of A Detailed Man (available in most bookstores and Amazon), calls these dents “Aw c’mon, man” moments.  “I have been to countless crime scenes,” says David.  “When you respond to a scene that is related to a violent crime, especially homicide, even the smallest mistake can ruin the outcome of the case. I’m especially tough on some authors who write crime fiction — it’s what we in law enforcement call an ‘Aw c’mon, man’ moment.’”

Let’s look at the top five mistakes, or “Aw c’mon, man” blunders, in no particular order, that writers make at crime scenes.

Using incorrect terminology. One popular misconception is that the words cartridges and bullets are synonymous. A bullet, the projectile that fires from a rifle, revolver or other small firearm, is one part of a cartridge. Two other words that writers sometimes use interchangeably: spent bullets and spent casings. A spent bullet, sometimes called a slug, is one that has stopped moving after being fired. Spent bullets are often pretty distorted after hitting objects on their way to a resting place. A spent casing is one from which a bullet has been fired. Although spent bullets and casings might be found at a crime scene, casings are more likely to be lying in plain sight.

Mishandling evidence. “First rule of any crime scene investigation,” says Swinson, “is when you observe what is obviously evidence, leave it where it is. Don’t move it!”  An “Aw c’mon, man” crime scene scenario for Swinson: “Spent casings are visible on the floor beside the body, a semi auto is a few feet away, and a little baggy that contains what appears to be a white powdery substance is near the weapon. The detective picks up the gun and inspects it and then picks up the baggy, opens it and smells or takes a taste using his finger. This makes me crazy! A detective would never pick up crucial evidence before it is photographed or, if necessary, dusted for prints. This contaminates evidence and can jeopardize the prosecutor’s case. And a detective would never, ever pick up what might be illegal narcotics and taste it!”

To read the full article, click here

Related articles

• Crime Scene Safety – Learning from the Experts (chiefmoody55.wordpress.com)
• Teen arrested after homework left at crime scene (news.com.au)

Your Writing PIs

Last month we gave several presentations at the Pike Peak Writers Conference, a fun, informative annual conference held in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. We taught two workshops for writers: “Surveillance 101″ and “Missing Persons 101.”

Today we’ll share a few of our “Surveillance 101″ slides on the topic of “blending in” while on surveillance:

Rule Number One: Blend In!

Types of clothing to wear on surveillance, based on locale, weather, length of surveillance

Choose an Appropriate Surveillance Vehicle for the Locale

Tips for Picking Effective Surveillance Vehicles

More Tips for Effective Surveillance Vehicles

We loved The Rockford Files, but this is hardly an effective surveillance vehicle!

Have a great day, Writing PIs

Related articles

• Talking Surveillance Cameras Coming to U.S. Streets (640whlo.com)
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Here at Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes, we write a lot about serious issues.  Today, we’d like to offer a smattering of items, from investigation news, handy resources and even some fun stuff.  Yeah, fun stuff.  It’s Mother’s Day.  Time to smile a little.

Private Investigators in the News

Click on a link to read article:

Private Eyes Spy on Staff (The Portside Messenger)

Private Eyes Spy on Exam Sheets: Private Detectives May Be Called in to Catch Any Internet Cheats (The Connexion)

Piles of junk prompt St. John’s to hire private eyes (CTV News)

Private investigators are selling access to financial and criminal records (The Guardian)

Handy Resources

Click on link to read more about service/product.

Read-Notify: Track your email. Know when emails you’ve sent get read, even from what city.

Convoflow: Harvest real-time social media conversations.

Changedetection.com: Be automatically notified when any web page changes.

Google Keyword Tool: Evaluate the usefulness of keywords before using them in websites and blogs.

Fun Stuff

Click on a link to check it out:

Quick Quiz: Check Your Knowledge of the FBI in Pop Culture (Brought to you by the FBI)

FBI Widgets (Want “10 Most Wanted” on your Cell? An “FBI History” widget? A “Wanted by the FBI” module?…All brought to you again by the FBI, who’re showing you they can be fun, sorta, too).

Inside Private Eye: A video look at the inner work of the satirical UK publication Private Eye

“Another Whacko Process Service: Is It Time to Quit?” On a sister site, one of the Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes’s PIs debates the process-serving biz after escaping a woman wielding a frying pan.

Have a great Mother’s Day, Writing PIs

Related articles

• Maloofs’ Private Eye Investigates Business Owners’ Letter To NBA (sacramento.cbslocal.com)
• Story Foibles in Private Eye Fiction (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Going for the Best: When Private Investigators Hire Other Private Investigators (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Answering Writers’ Questions: What Records Can PIs Legally Obtain? (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Private Investigators and Murder Cases (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Excerpt from How Do Private Eyes Do That?: How PIs Are Used in Cases Where DNA Evidence Is Employed (writingpis.wordpress.com)

Here at Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes, we’re not only private investigators (and one of us also a trial attorney), but we also love reading the private eye genre.  Lots of great authors and books out there…and then sometimes we read something so implausible, so silly, we relate to Dorothy Parker who once said, “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

Without naming names or titles (in fact, we’ve disguised some story attributes so authors/books aren’t identifiable), we’ll discuss a few instances lately where we wanted to throw a book with great force.

Clueless, Really?

We just read a novel, actually one that is part of a series, where the private eye team met with an individual.  As readers, we had

PIs Don’t Leave Their Partners Clueless

no idea who this individual was, but considering the fictional PI team was hot on the trail of a case, obviously this person was someone who might have pertinent information about a suspect or the crime itself, or maybe was an eye witness, or…well, we were ready to find out.

Imagine our surprise when one of the PIs had no idea why the meeting was taking place! The individual with whom the PI team was meeting asked the clueless PI (very loosely paraphrasing the dialogue here), “You don’t know who am I?”  The clueless PI answered, “No.”  The individual turns to the other PI and asked, “Your partner doesn’t know why the two of you are here?”  to which the first PI quipped something like, “Yeah, I don’t like to tell my partner everything — it’s good for [the clueless PI] to be surprised.”

What?  A PI team goes to a meeting with a possibly important resource/witness/contact, and one of the PIs is purposefully left uninformed and clueless?  This was one of several clueless episodes in this story, and the one that made us finally shut the book for good.  There is no way one of us would drive the other to such a meeting and not brief our partner on the ride. It’s to the benefit of any case we’re working that we’re both as informed as possible.  We both have our strengths, our styles of interviewing/investigating, and if we’re both well informed, we’ve just doubled our chances to unearth that telling detail, maybe even solve the case.

This isn’t PI rocket science.  Even in the business world, who wants to purposefully take a clueless person to a meeting?  Or how about leaving your car for repair at a shop and not tell anyone what you want fixed or looked at in your car?

Enough said.  Onto the next PI peeve.

Cell Phone, Really?

It’s fairly safe to say that the majority of current-day PIs have basic-to-advanced technological skills. For example many of us rely on our smartphones to do a handful of investigative tasks that used to require a bucket load of equipment.  For example, at our agency, we use our smartphones to record and transmit witness interviews, take photos, even scan and transmit documents.  Cool stuff.

Here’s our techno-peeve: We recently started to read a story set in 1990 where the PI didn’t answer her phone because she’d forgotten to charge it.  Uh, hello?  Were there cell phones in common use in 1990?  To be fair, we researched cell phones on the Internet.  According to “The Evolution of Cell Phone Design Between 1983 and 2009,” the first truly portable phone was the Motorola MicroTAC 9800X made in 1989 — a monster affair with a ruler-size antennae.  According to Wikipedia, the 9800X’s price tag was between $2,495 and $3,495.  This wasn’t a rich PI by any means — in fact, this gumshoe had to scrimp on food and other essentials to make the monthly rent.  Seriously doubt this fictional PI could afford a cell phone that cost several thousand dollars. Heck, even today, my business partner and I wouldn’t blow that kind of money on a cell phone!

By the way, the next cell phone was the digital hand-size mobile telephone called the Motorola International 3200 made in 1992, two years after this story took place.

It’s a small point, maybe, but cell phones are such a part of our world today that this inaccurate factoid stood out like Philip Marlowe at a nunnery.  Wouldn’t have taken much research for the writer to realize the PI probably used a landline in 1990. Still can’t figure out how this slipped past the editor…maybe he/she was too busy on their cell phone to notice.

Have a great week, Writing PIs

Related articles

• Private Investigators and Murder Cases (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Private Eye News: From Training Programs to Gadgets (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Excerpt from How Do Private Eyes Do That?: How PIs Are Used in Cases Where DNA Evidence Is Employed (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Private Eye Stories That Get It Right (writingpis.wordpress.com)

There were revelations today that the Saint’s GM Loomis had equipment in his possession from 2002 to 2004 that enabled him to listen in on opposing coaches’s radio transmissions during games.

Whoa! After all the Saints have gone through, what does this new revelation portend?

If true, Loomis broke both NFL regulations and federal wiretapping laws.  If proven guilty, Loomis could lose draft picks and be fined by the NFL. But that’s small change compared to being found guilty of wiretapping, which could mean up to five years in a

Wiretapping carries a potential sentence of up to 5 years in prison.

federal penitentiary.

To add insult to injury, during those years (2002 to 2004), the Saints won 12 home games and lost 12 home games. Seems like a lot of trouble to commit the federal crime of wiretapping for such a break-even win-loss record.

There'll be lots of investigators rummaging about, from those in attorneys' offices to those working for the feds.

Could the GM really be found guilty of wiretapping? Yes, but frankly, he’s a fine candidate for probation. So far, no other skeletons have come out of his closet.  There’ll be a lot of investigators — from Loomis’s attorney’s office to the feds — who will be skulking around, sniffing for dirt or ways to freshen up any found dirt.

But even if found guilty, there’s a glimmer of hope for Loomis.  After all, most federal judges in Louisiana are ardent Saints’ fans.

P.S. We’ve noticed a lot of articles refer to Loomis “eavesdropping” however he was tapping into others’ communications using an electronic device, which is wiretapping.

Related articles

• Eavesdropping, the Saints continue to find ways to make headlines (psliplaw.wordpress.com)
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• Report: Saints GM Mickey Loomis Could Eavesdrop On Opposing Coaches (tracking.si.com)
• Were The Saints* Even Naughtier? (dailynorseman.com)

The Internet is full of reviews, from the best and worst cars to lawyers to books.  And just as the Internet is full of reviews, it’s also full of all kinds of people and varying tastes.  Some people like Chevys, some like Hondas.  Some people dig romance novels, some only read horror tales.  With all these varying tastes and styles, it’s inevitable products and people get varying reviews, too.

Sometimes even bad reviews.

Tips to Make Search Engines Not So Interested in That Bad Review

Rather than focus on the bad review, you can take steps to make it less interesting to the Internet.  Less interesting to the Internet = lower rankings in browser searches.  We’re talking some simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips here:

• Don’t click on that bad review link.  I know, it’s tough.  You want to.  You’ve seen the “1″ ranking and the first few words of the review and you want to know more what that idiot said.  But if you click on that link and open the review, guess what? You’re sending a signal to search engines that people find that review interesting.  You don’t want to do that.
• Oops, I clicked that bad review link!  Okay, click the back button and navigate to one of your stellar reviews.  One of those 5-starred ones where somebody gushed about your product/service/book. Then close your browser.  This sends a signal to search engines that the second review, the better one, had more impact that that almost-insignificant bad one.
• Don’t search that bad review again.  Or search for keywords within that review. If you do the latter, you’re again signaling search engines that those nasty keywords are important to readers.

Steps to Boost Postive Reviews of Your Product/Service/Book on the Internet

These actions can help “push down” any negative reviews:

• Set up different profiles (from a blog to Twitter) and fill them with unique content.
• Ask satisfied clients (or book fans) to post favorable reviews of your product/service/book.
• Do not post a rebuttal to a bad review.  I know, it’s tempting.  But don’t.  This adds relevant content to the bad review, which signals search engines that people find this review interesting, which boosts the ranking of that bad review…you’ve just been your worst enemy.

May the Force of the Internet Be with You, Writing PIs

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Unless you’ve been living in a black box, you’re aware that Google has been blithely tracking user activity on the Web. Below are a few recent articles on this subject (click on link to read an article):

Google Caught Tracking Safari Users: What You Need to Know

Google announces privacy changes across products; users can’t opt out

Did Google intentionally track you?

A warrior’s forum member had this stringent advice for stopping Google from tracking your web activities:

if you want to avoid Google knowing anything about you, stop using Google’s services. Like in Orson Well’s 1984 big brother wants to know everything. The more information you allow Google to know, they more control they gain over your life.

Okay, but some people do like to use Google — after all, it’s still the most comprehensive public, and free, search engine available. Fortunately, there are other options, as well as preventative measures, that people can take to protect Google from tracking their web activities.

How Trackable Is Your Browser?

Panopticlick, a research project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tests your browser to see what information it shares with other sites. The service is free and anonymous.

A Few Tips for Protecting Your Browsing

• Use a more secure browser, such as DuckDuckGo that doesn’t track your search results. They even have an informative piece that outlines their privacy policy (Google Tracks You. We Don’t). We dig DuckDuckGo. It’s now our go-to browser.
• Use Google’s tools to opt out of ad networks. This article explains how: “How to Prevent Google from Tracking You”
• Protect your YouTube searches (YouTube is owned by Google). This article explains how: “How to Prevent YouTube from Keeping a Record of the Videos You Watch”

Why Not Use a Proxy Service?

Although a proxy service, such as Anonymizer, hides a user’s IP address, it doesn’t necessarily anonymize the user’s personal information found in HTTP headers.

Have a great weekend, Writing PIs

Related articles

• New Search Engine DuckDuckGo Soars Thanks To Google’s Lack Of Privacy (googleexposed.wordpress.com)
• DuckDuckGo: Search Engine with an Eye for Privacy (pcworld.com)
• Tracking People: Google, Social Media and Surveillance (writingpis.wordpress.com)
• Protected Search Lets You Use Google Without Being Tracked (ghacks.net)
• Google privacy tips: how to avoid telling them too much (guardian.co.uk)