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.”

This isn’t a regular job. PIs are paid by corporations, HR departments, attorneys, and sometimes government agencies to follow people around and catch them committing fraud, breaking the law, and cheating. We see some wild behavior, and we get to see behind the curtain how aggressive managerial elites are willing to play the game. 

That would be enough to drive the average normie crazy, but the deception can be destabilizing as well. I have been hired many times to surveil other investigators while they are surveilling targets. I’ve been hired to do counter-surveillance. And the kicker: I’ve been hired to surveil police.

But it gets worse. After 22 years of this work, I have an enemies list. I’ve testified in fraud cases face to face with targets and burned down the schemes of a considerable number of criminals. I have legitimate reasons to look over my shoulder. 

Staying sharp is one thing, but paranoia is a whole other thing. 

The first time I saw this was only a few years into my career. A boomer-aged investigator, running a large firm in Metro Detroit, hired me to surveil a member of his family for reasons that seemed trivial. The request was weird, given that I had a personal relationship with him, thus a conflict of interest, yet he came to me with, “I need you to do this because I trust you and only you.” It was completely stupid. No financial stake or marital betrayal was at play, just one guy needing to know if one person was in communication with another. Who cares?

Not long after, I encountered probably one of the most paranoid investigators I’ve ever met. A very good operator who was overcome with the thought that every target of his investigation was somehow aware of his presence. He was fixated. Every surveillance I worked with him came a point where he’d declare, “they know” or “we’re made”.

There is, of course, a darker form of paranoia more common among investigators of a certain age. It’s the belief that you’re being watched, or a fixation on the prospect they’re the target of counter-surveillance.

It’s common enough to become a trope: The hard-boiled detective who knows too much, who stumbles upon something larger than himself, or who knows some truth or dark secret that nobody will believe. Yeah, that’s all bullshit. It’s a boomer-brain fixation, festooned with confirmation bias. A preconceived notion that one wants to believe is true and begins to think is true.  

A grand design? Hardly. There is no shadowy deep conspiracy wherein a powerful villain is pulling all the strings and getting away with it.

Readers are probably wondering if I’ve fallen into paranoia. To be honest, I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I keep a social circle outside of my line of work and spend the bulk of my free time with people who have no concept of what I do and don’t view the world with a “Spy vs. Spy” mentality. 

I’ll tell you the real reason I’ve staved off the paranoia. I’ve watched “The Conversation” more times than I can count. The accuracy of that film is inexplicable. I’m regularly reminded of how a PI can slowly and painfully lose his wits. Paranoia can overcome even a sharp professional.

That won’t be me. I’m having too much fun. 

J.Z. Delorean is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.