What’s It Like to be a Husband-and-Wife PI Team?

For the most part, it’s fun. We’ve been running our investigations business long enough that we understand how the other likes to work, what our strengths and weaknesses are, and we like to make each other laugh.  A lot. When we first opened the investigations agency, there were a sizeable number of people who called and assumed Colleen was the secretary. She’d politely let them know that she was one of the PIs, and that she and her husband both took phone messages for the other.

We talk about being a PI team more at our “sistuh site” Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes in a recent blog  ”He Said, She Said: Pros and Cons of Being Married to Your PI Partner” — click here to read it.

A local newspaper ran a story about us last summer. It was a kick hanging with the reporter, although when she didn’t get some of our sixties and seventies references, we realized we’re, well, growing older. To read “For These Married Detectives, Truth is More Fun Than Fiction” (the reporter picked that title, and she’s right…it is more fun), click here.

We know a few other married PI-team couples, such as Jimmie and Rosemarie Mesis who, besides running their own investigations business, also are publishers of Professional Investigator Magazine. If you’re a writer developing a sleuth character or story, consider buying a subscription to this online/print magazine — articles are mostly written by professional private investigators on a wide variety of pertinent topics. Plus there are sections about Internet resources, investigative tips and gadgets, legal issues affecting the investigative industry.  If you don’t want a year subscription, you can also purchase a single issue.

So it’s no surprise Colleen, one of the real-life married-PI team writing this blog, also wrote a novel, The Zen Man, which features a husband-and-wife PI team.  Is their fictional truth more fun than reality? What is the sound of one hand clapping? It’s Zen, baby.

Colleen got tired of trying to figure out how to set prices on different book-selling sites without messing up the royalty rate on Amazon (which she was becoming an expert at doing), so her husband Shaun (who she calls “the real Zen Man”) convinced her to stop worrying about juggling the price and just make it .99 across the board. So that’s the price from here on out. Nine-nine cents. Enjoy.

The Zen Man on Kindle

The Zen Man on Nook

The Zen Man on Smashwords