The Setup

I loved the This American Life episode about this story, and I picked up this book at some point when it was a Kindle Daily Deal and never got around to reading it...until now. So I'd kind of forgotten some of the details from the TAL episode, and the book obviously goes into it all in way more depth. And also some MORE stuff happened after the episode was recorded. So it felt pretty fresh to me even though I'd heard a lot of the story before. It's a seriously intense story and I admire all the investigative work Pete Crooks did. But also I kind of didn't care? I'm not a big fan of true crime/mysteries and in retrospect, the This American Life episode had exactly as much detail as I wanted about this. If you are a fan of true crime you might appreciate this book more than me. I definitely highly recommend the This American Life episode though! ( http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/447/the-incredible-case-of-the-pi-moms )

It's always funny when people try to translate the things they see on the movies and TV into their everyday life.

It's confusing when they do so in the midst of filming a reality TV show. Things get meta, fast.

Pete Crooks is a mild-mannered journalist who's just trying to finish an assignment about a local PI when he gets tipped off that the ride-along he went on was a setup. This draws him far too deeply into the web of intrigue, backstabbing and outright pettiness that almost all of us not there associate with California.

Crooks is an able reporter and a pretty good writer, though his constant jumps in the narrative (I believed this guy, but I didn't know x, y or z) are more jarring than helpful - if you're trying to bring the reader along with you, don't spoil the ending?