How much would you pay...?

I've been thinking - which is never a good sign because it usually means things are getting desperate - that there has to be a different (and maybe even better) way of doing things.

Recently, Brian Willingham wrote a piece over in Pursuit Magazine titled 'A Slave to the Billable Hour' and it has rekindled an idea I had a while ago.

Value-based billing.

Nice work if you can get it

Well, Dear Reader, the winds of change may be a-blowin' if  things go my way.

Which they won't.

But if for some reason, and against all odds, they do, I may be a down-and-out Private Investigator no longer and actually find myself in gainful employment.

Yep, working for the man.

Doing what, you might ask?

PIs in fiction: Hank Dolworth and Britt Pollack

It was a terrible crime.

A crime that the 2010 series "Terriers" was canned after just one season.

Hank Dolworth and Britt Pollack (played by Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, respectively) are unlikely duo of unlicenced PIs in Southern California, fighting the good fight.

Mostly within the law.

Don't Ask

Well, Dear Reader, just when I thought things couldn't get much worse, they took a turn for the predictable.

Have I mentioned how much I hate tyre-kickers and timewasters?

I think I might have. Once or twice.

Enter Hazel, not her real name. Actually I have no idea what her name is at the moment, it has changed twice already in our communications.

Hazel is trying to pump me for advice and information under the guise of being a 'potential client'. Except that I know there will never be any work and, more importantly, dollars coming my way from the elusive and mysterious Hazel.

Is 'Gang Stalking' a real phenomenon?

Now THAT's a surveillance van..

...as Crocodile Dundee might say, if he were a PI.

Apologies for the laxity in updates but I've been a busy man; busy feeling sorry for myself - which is almost a full-time occupation in itself although, to be fair, not all that rewarding.

Well, you only have yourselves to blame. Apart from the occasional "Winning Lottery" notification, or a very nice email from the Solicitor of some former dead politician in Niger offering me a lot of money, my inbox has been rather quiet of late. You could make an effort to flick me a line, even if just to tell me how crap I am.

It's a two-way thing, you know. Communication.

About that surveillance van in the photograph, though. That harks back to when we PIs were cool and could get a table in any restaurant in town.

Unlike now, apparently.  

Anyway, it belonged to the (in)famous Hollywood gumshoe, Fred Otash, whose exploits you can read about further here.