Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye

by Josiah Thompson

Philosopher-turned-detective Josiah Thompson tells how his curiosity about the danger and riddle-solving that surrounds detective work led to a career as a private eye in San Francisco and includes details of detective work and philosophical musing on his

Genres: Nonfiction, Crime, Autobiography, Biography

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Josiah Thompson is an American writer, professional private investigator, and former philosophy professor. He wrote Six Seconds in Dallas, A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination. In 1967 he published The Lonely Labyrinth, a study of the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's thought, and in 1972, Kierkegaard: A Collection of Critical Essays. He also wrote a biography of Kierkegaard in 1974, and a well-received book about his own, post-academic life as a private detective, Gumshoe: Reflections in a Private Eye in 1988.

Thompson graduated from Yale University in 1957. He entered the Navy, serving in Underwater Demolition Team 21. Then he returned to Yale for his M.A. in 1962 and Ph.D. in 1964. After receiving his doctorate, he taught at Yale as Instructor of Philosophy and then moved on to teach at Haverford College, where he remained until 1976, resigning to begin a career as a private detective.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full professor of philosophy at Haverford College on Philadelphia's leafy Main Line gives up tenure to become a private investigator in California. That's an unusual, perhaps unparalleled, career move and so it is not surprising that this is not your average tale of a hard-boiled PI. It's pretty well written, but at times quirky and a bit uneven as "Tink" Thompson veers from the somewhat tedious work of stakeout surveillance to thinking on his past as a professor, husband and father, to relating his new profession to the character of Sam Spade and the author Dashiell Hammett, who was a PI himself.
I'm certainly glad I read it, but it will probably appeal only to serious fans of Hammett (there is some serious critical reading interspersed with surveillance jobs and other capers) and those looking for accounts of the real lives and routines of contemporary PIs. In this latter connection, the book would also be of interest to those concerned with glaring miscarriages of Justice in capital murder cases in the US. Here, Thompson rather modestly presents how he cracked the Chol Soo Lee case and incidentally provided yet more evidence cross-racial eyewitness identification really is unreliable, tempting as such evidence is to police forces under pressure to solve cases and garner convictions quickly. As it is, while this account is clear and detailed in laying out the breaking of that important case, Thompson could have given us more.

[Linda Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this so long ago I've forgotten most of the details. The book was published on September 30, 1989, and copies at Amazon are getting rather expensive. I must have read it in the early 1990's. Too bad there's no Kindle version, yet. I remember I enjoyed reading about the detective's adventures, even the boredom of stakeouts. At the time I daydreamed about becoming a PI but it never happened.

[Michael Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the many coincidences of my life, I was wandering in a books store, around the dump table, looking at the cheap, get-this-out-of-the-store books. So I find this autobiography of a detective called “Gumshoe.” Not only is this guy a real life detective, he was a real life academic. A former professor of philosophy from Tiaverford College. I was working on my first detective novel called “Club Dead.” It seemed like just the thing I should read, so I did. Josiah’s marriage had failed. He is superfluous in life as he put it. I think he meant irrelevant. Thus quit his academic job and he became a Private Eye. At one point he states, “I’d become weary of deception (He means Marriage) . . . But I hadn’t then dealt with my predilection for the dramatic, nor had I acknowledged the price of candor.” “The price of candor,” that could be the title of a chapter of my autobiography. I stumble on such works as these and they become relevant to my life or is it that I make everything I stumble on relevant to my life? I have no idea. So as a Gumshoe, Josiah wanders around doing divorce cases, stake-outs, and missing persons. Standard Private Dick stuff. Of course he ends up talking about himself and his problems with love. Why he always failed in love. It came from a phrase of his. Something he never had, “the nakedness that love requires.” The story, since it was about his real life, had ambiguousness about it. Unlike a drama, life just reels on and on with no specific direction, you never reach a conclusive dramatic, climax, things just run down, stopping only because you get tired and want to sleep. And nothing is ever over. Nothing is ever decided. People just forget, like Josiah’s marriage breakup. He and his wife Nancy just forgot about each other. And then there was the one piece of advice someone once gave him about a P.I. thing, “Don’t push it, every case has its own rhythm. It is your job to find that rhythm.” It’s all about rhythm? The music of life? Another coincidence, Josiah turns out to be from Ohio. My home state. Josiah’s story is truly a story of the last half of the 20th Century in America. Each person has time enough to feel the bleakness of life. Success in the modern world requires finding a way to deal with that bleakness. In the Boston Strangler book a psychiatrist states that “Sanity is based on avoiding reality. Reality really is a constant conflict in life. Life and death struggle is all around us, but it is the insane person that can’t look away from it. The sane person gets on with life day to day. The insane becomes immobile.” Josiah was a smart guy. Josiah realized this also. He just kept at it. Life that is. If you can find it. Read this book.

[Johann_tor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well written, realistic protrayal of service provision.

[Adam Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm torn on this book. There are parts that are quite good, like the describing the last couple of cases, but there are as long sections that are a slog. Are we supposed to feel sorry for this guy who had everything, but got bored and cheated on his wife? The stuff on the maltese Falcon was a complete bore as well. Not a bad read, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get it.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and circumspect look at an unusual profession.

[Aaron the Pink Donut · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well writen book on what it is really like to be a private dick.