Why Private Investigators Crack Up

I watch this scene all the time to keep myself sane: A private investigator destroys his apartment in a frantic search for the bug he suspects has been secretly planted in his home. He rips out drywall, pulls up flooring, tears up everything in sight, and then finally slumps to the floor, mentally exhausted and empty handed.

It’s from Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation”—the 1974 film staring Gene Hackman, Harrison Ford, and the late great John Cazale. After decades of working in the shadows, running surveillance operations on countless targets, planting listening devices, and operating discreetly in the shady underworld, the PI hero cracks up.

I’ve seen this more times in the real world than I’d like to admit: Investigators often lose their grip on reality.

I trained for three years with a guy named Dave who was a 20-year veteran and had run over 3,000 surveillances at the time I began working with him. To this day, he is the best surveillance investigator I’ve ever seen. The very first lesson he gave me was: “Don’t get weird. Do not let yourself become weird. Remain detached from all this.”