Private Lies by Alison Marsh – reviewed

From mugging victim to private eye, Alison Marsh shares real cases in Private Lies. But although her memoir provides facts, a crucial element is missing…

Alison Marsh was living an ordinary life with her family, working at a job she loved. Then one evening, she was attacked by a knife-wielding mugger. She fought him off, chased him, and then called the police. Her attacker was never caught. This lack of justice outraged her and she decided to begin a new career as a private investigator.

Trench coats and trilbies

However, you can’t just don your trilby and trench coat and get started. Marsh talks about courses she has taken and the training she has undergone in order to gain the skills needed in her line of work.

Her business, Miss AM Investigations, has attracted a fair bit of attention in the UK media and has featured in the Daily Mail, the Sun, OK magazine and BBC Woman’s Hour.

The book that arose from this, Private Lies: True Stories From My Life as a Private Investigator, is her first book and looks at how she became a PI, and the kind of work she does.

Autobiography and memoir

This is a crowded market.

Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt about his experiences as a junior doctor was a bestseller and was adapted for television; Jenny Radcliffe’s bestseller, People Hacker: Confessions of a Burglar for Hire, about her work as a security consultant; or even Raynor Winn’s now beleaguered memoir, The Salt Path have all been major hits, attracting acclaim and a wide audience.

So how does Alison Marsh’s book stack up in this very competitive environment?

Private Lies is a very easy read, unlike Adam Kay’s book which allows the pain to show behind the mask of humour; or Sad Tiger, Neige Sinno’s memoir of child abuse which draws the reader in to the bleak reality of this world.

Marsh’s book is clearly organised into the process of setting up the business, the different kinds of investigations she has carried out, and the methods she has used to investigate them.

These can include attaching GPS trackers to cars (legal under strict constraints), trawling through databases, checking people’s social media, contacting them via an alias on dating sites, and carrying out physical surveillance.

A ‘Dummies’ Guide’?

Different kinds of investigation are exemplified by a particular case. The book looks at romance scams, chasing down leads, locating hidden assets, even assessing the reliability of a client.

In one case, a coercive man tries to use Marsh to track down ‘Alice’, a woman who has managed to escape him. This is a truly dark tale and one in which she is able to relate the outcome. In most cases, the private investigator’s role ends before the story concludes.

After each case, she outlines the processes she went through as a PI in order to be successful.

The book could almost be subtitled ‘The Dummies’ Guide to becoming a Private Investigator’. Private investigation is a challenging and professional business. My own books, Silent Playgrounds and Someone Who Isn’t Me show what catastrophes can occur when an inexperienced person steps into this world.

But…

And herein lies the problem. It doesn’t always work so well as an entertaining read.

There are several reasons for this: Marsh is careful to keep to the facts of an investigation. Very often, for a PI, the story ends when she hands over her findings to the client. She may never know the final result, so neither does the reader. A case that may arouse the reader’s curiosity or indignation comes to an abrupt halt, giving a sense of incompleteness.

We don’t see the personal responses or the outcomes, because Marsh doesn’t see them. For this reason, many of the stories feel unfinished.

A lack of colour

A second problem is that though Marsh describes the problems of the work – the boredom and bone-aching fatigue of surveillance, the adrenaline-fuelled moments of discovery – she doesn’t make the reader feel it. The writing is very one-note.

Sitting in a car watching a suspect; talking to her husband at home; walking her dog – these experiences are not particularly differentiated in the writing. Even the story of the coercive man trying to locate the woman he has been abusing lacks a real sense of darkness.

Almost as if Marsh realises this, she will suddenly insert a metaphor or a bit of unnecessary descriptive detail that can seem forced. A young police officer stands ‘coyly’ in the corner of an interview room. A shock revelation is ‘like a bomb was detonated’.

The person behind the stories

Who is Alison Marsh? The book doesn’t really tell us. The real person is kept firmly behind the façade of the private investigator.

Private Lies will be a valuable resource for any fiction writer who wants some insights into the ways a PI works. It provides a useful starting point for someone who is interested in going into the business themselves. Marsh gives brief but useful tips on training and how to get started, but as an engaging read, it too often fails to draw the reader in.