A darkly comic foray into the world of men and women who fake their own deaths, the consultants who help them disappear, and the private investigators whoâll stop at nothing to bring them back to life.
âA delightful read for anyone tantalized by the prospect of disappearing without a trace.â âErik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake
âDelivers all the lo-fi spy shenanigans and caught-red-handed schadenfreude youâre hoping for.â âNPR
âA lively romp.â âThe Boston Globe
âGrim fun.â âThe New York Times
âBrilliant topic, absorbing book.â âThe Seattle Times
âThe most literally escapist summer read you could hope for.â âThe Paris Review
Is it still possible to fake your own death in the twenty-first century? With six figures of student loan debt, Elizabeth Greenwood was tempted to find out. So off she sets on a darkly comic foray into the world of death fraud, where for $30,000 a consultant can make you disappearâbut your suspicious insurance company might hire a private detective to dig up your coffin...only to find it filled with rocks.
Greenwood tracks down a British man who staged a kayaking accident and then returned to live in his own house while all his neighbors thought he was dead. She takes a call from Michael Jackson (no, heâs not deadâor so her new acquaintances would have her believe), stalks message boards for people contemplating pseudocide, and gathers intel on black market morgues in the Philippines, where she may or may not obtain some fraudulent goodies of her own. Along the way, she learns that love is a much less common motive than money, and that making your death look like a drowning virtually guarantees that youâll be caught. (Disappearing while hiking, however, is a way great to go.)
Playing Dead is a charmingly bizarre investigation in the vein of Jon Ronson and Mary Roach into our all-too-human desire to escape from the lives we lead, and the men and women desperate enough to give up their livesâand their familiesâto start again.