Five of the most realistic fictional PIs

Elizabeth Breck is a California licensed private investigator. She went back to school and graduated summa cum laude from the University of California San Diego with a bachelor's degree in Writing. She writes the Madison Kelly Mysteries about her alter ego Madison Kelly.

The latest book in the series is Double Take.

[Q&A with Elizabeth Breck]

At CrimeReads Breck tagged five favorite authors who get the private investigator novel right every time, including:

Jane Whitefield by Thomas Perry

Jane Whitefield is the best PI in fiction. And technically she isn’t even a PI. She takes people who are in danger and gives them new lives. The way she does it almost looks like magic—they disappear from one place and appear in another. She uses disguises, and she studies the bad guys and their lair before deciding on a plan. Her father was Native American, Seneca, and she uses the Seneca culture and customs to help her make moral and investigative decisions; there is a spirituality to her choices that is compelling. The way she studies a scene to look for the person who doesn’t fit—the bad guy searching for her client—helped me to study the subjects of my investigations. She specializes in how to blend in—which I then used in an investigation where I had to follow a guy for three days all over Nevada: being 5’11” with blonde hair, I don’t normally blend in well. Jane taught me how to do it, and my subject didn’t spot me the entire time.

Thomas Perry has a new Jane Whitefield book [out now] called The Left-Handed Twin, and I can’t wait. My favorite is the second in the series, Dance for the Dead, and I’ve read it numerous times.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Left-Handed Twin.

--Marshal Zeringue