Spygirl: True Adventures from My Life as a Private Eye

by Amy Gray

While her friends are making mad cash and getting massages at their dot-com jobs, Amy Gray quits her low-status publishing position to realize her girlhood dream of being a private investigator. Joining a small Manhattan agency, she finds herself plunged into an intriguing world of “con men, lunatics, narcissists, polygamists, sociopaths, felons, petty thieves, and pathological liars”—a description almost as apt for the men in her social life as for her on-the-job subjects. Working with a gang of misfit colleagues (a former zookeeper, a one-time child star, an avant-garde philosopher, and other eccentrics), Amy discovers even more about herself as she detects uncanny parallels between her investigations and her tumultuous love life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Autobiography, True Crime, Chick Lit, Biography Memoir, Biography

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just sort of 'eh' for me. Can't remember much else besides being very gung-ho about donating it to a used-book sale.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much happening here. Yet another book that makes living in NYC sound like a dystopian hellscape, but dull.

[Stobby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible book. While the rest of us spent our early twenties busing tables at Hooters (or was that just me?) Amy Gray got to play Laura Holt in the seedy underground of New York City. The back cover reads:

‘….she finds herself plunged into an intriguing world of “con men, lunatics, narcissists, polygamists, sociopaths, felons, petty thieves, and pathological liars”.’

Sounds like another day at Hooter's to me. The book is supposed to be about Amy Gray’s experience as a female private investigator. Instead, it’s more about Ms. Gray’s quest to find a boyfriend while she passes the days and pays the rent searching Internet databases on investment firms.

Whatever motives there may be for reading this book, it’s the definition of disappointment. I wouldn’t recommend it nor would I lean towards author Molly Jong-Fast who apparently found Spy Girl to be ‘funny and clever’. I waited 271 pages to find that and never did. I guess she’s a better detective than I.

[Keri · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but it wasn't what I thought it would be. I expected some really juicy spy girl stories, this was just boring investigating and the rants of a twenty-something little girl trying to find "Mr. Right" in a crowd of drunk, self-obsessed, under-achievers. It was like watching someone work a really boring job, watching them take smoke breaks, and then suffer painful dates in gross, crowded bars. I had to finish it because I'm in a reading challenge with my son, and it did count as a book read. The only positive thing I can say is that the writer has good vocabulary, that is all.

[Travis Kendall · Rating 1 out of 5]

I admit I was sucked in the by the cover, which is one of the most misleading I've ever seen (the words spy, adventure, and probably PI should be removed). I was thinking of Emma Peel leather cat suit jumping over car hoods in a hail of gunfire. Instead what you get is 90% Sex in the City and a 10% mix of The Office and your job on downers. Some of the people she works with seem slightly interesting but overall this is just the self-important ramblings of a neurotic. kind of dysfunctional party girl.

[C · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not like. Irritating and unlikeable voice, flowery pretentious writing that described very little. Disliked every character and was perplexed both by the recounting of the string of repulsive boyfriends and the romantic (?) ending.

I'd hoped from the title that there would be wacky adventures in private investigation, but that's actually a fairly minor part of the book. It's more devoted to stories about her friends that never really go anywhere, and odd non sequiturs.

[Amy]

I have always wanted to be a private investigator (I even wrote a paper about it for careers class in high school), so I was very intrigued by this book. It took forever for anything to happen, and it seemed like she was judging everyone. I know as an investigator you have to be perceptive, but it was almost like she didn't take things seriously.

[Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

The thing about a good memoir is that the situations must be interesting to the readers, not just the author. You'd think that a book about a young female private eye in NYC would be a fun, compelling read. Maybe if the private eye and author were someone other than Amy Gray, it would be.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gray tells the story of her PI life with a typically post-modern blend of snarky hipster-speak and ponderous navel-gazing, but her wit (particularly about her crap romantic life) is charming and fun.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not what I expected. I wanted more PI stories instead of her lovelife scenarios.

[Kristy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought I'd like this book because I love spy novels and have always had an interest in them. This book was terribly boring I would not recommend it to anyone.

[Jena Gardner · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem...on page 74 I determined that I had already read this a year ago. I have no memory of it. Enough said.

[Kerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quick vacuous read.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Great!

[Lexie Dunne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave it up, couldn't get past chapter two.

[Anne Marshall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't finish it. Who has time to read substandard work?

[Dana Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is written in starts and stops. It’s not actually about anything really. Just a hand full of stories thrown together with the allure being that the author was personal investigator. That’s all. There is no real substance and the lead character who is also the author comes across as flighty and not reliable.

[Anne Vandenbrink · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not so much about actually being a spy. A few cases of fraud consisting of only background checks. The book is more about her failed relationships with about half a dozen guys. Also about her friends and coworkers and smoking on the fire escape. No real plot. Not a very good book.

[Helga Beuckelaers · Rating 2 out of 5]

De titel klinkt veelbelovend maar deze past niet bij de verhaallijn. Het boek gaat over het leven van een jonge vrouw in een grote stad in Amerika. Dat ze werkt op een detectivebureau is eigenlijk slechts bijzaak

[Marjolein · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of the book has a timespan of a year. The "snippets" of the days are very short due to which it doesn't feel like a smooth story, as if a lot of bits and pieces are missing. You also don't really get an idea of the personality of the mail character because of this.

[Tex · Rating 2 out of 5]

More girly girl than spy girl. More romance novel than behind the scenes of a real life private investigator. Still, interesting to see.

[Jada Terpening · Rating 1 out of 5]

Im not sure if i really enjoyed this book. i liked it at first but then it just got boring to read. i read the rest of it but i wouldnt recomend this book to any teenage personal

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is well read and has a great vocabulary which I enjoyed! Overall the book was too light on Private Investigator stories and too heavy on late twenties dating issues.

[Bronwyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some patches of lovely writing, but overall a motley assemblage.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh....did not deliver as advertised.

[Jesse Laureyssens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring.

[eRin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so this was not really what I expected. And it's totally my fault. Clearly I didn't read the back of the book carefully enough because I was expecting sneaking around, hiding in bushes and spying on cheating husbands. She didn't do any of that (well, she did follow someone. Once). Wait, nevermind. It was not my fault. I just read the book cover again. It does NOT mention that her Private Investigator job was for corporation purposes and done almost entirely on the computer. Alright, we're all on the same page now. The book cover is misleading and she was not a kick-ass spy tailing misfits and shady characters in order to solve a mystery. She was following misfits and shady characters on the computer. The real disappointment is not that she was working as a somewhat boring PI, it was that she spent the majority of the book focusing on her love and social life. Now, I actually ended up being okay with it in the end because it was kind of interesting to me (you know, being a single gal myself and all), but to suggest that the book is primarily about her PI life is a complete lie. There were a couple of interesting cases, but she really only goes over a handful of them. It's more about a woman in her twenties finding herself. Which, as I said, is fine, but there's a whole lot of false advertising going on here. I just like people to be aware. So now you're aware.

[Rebekkila · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this book thinking I was going to be reading about a real life Stephanie Plum, not an office drone. The book was so-so, I liked the portions when she wasn't at work more than when she was doing her PI thing. Her first case was a con man who targeted wedding planners and gullible young women. I'm not quite sure what this guy got out of not paying catering and florist bills for for food and flowers he was never going to enjoy, but to each his own. After that work annecdotes became more and more boring. The Agency she works for specializes in background checks for companies hiring new high level employees and mergers, so mainly she was doing google searches.
Her personal life was a bit more exciting. She was stood up by Leonardo DiCaprio once, and also unbeknown to her immediate supervisor she saw him perform at a sex club. The book is short, her co-workers are colorful (one is nicknamed assman), and her dating life is full of horror stories; for that I would recommend it.

[Shawna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave up on this book 126 pages into it. I just didn't care. I picked it up thinking it would be a lot more private eye, but instead what I got was Girls/Sex and the City, but a lot less engaging. I didn't care who she was sleeping with or want to hear about her frequent outings to the Niagara bar to have guys buy drinks for her until she threw up. Toward the beginning of the book she admits that a lot of what she does is just google. Hmm. Yeah. The first major case she investigates -- the guy defrauding his way to a perfect wedding -- got my hopes up but just kind of deflated about halfway through.

Guessing she got the book deal through her connections in her prior life in publishing. Also disappointed by the fact that she thanked Betsy Lerner for being a great editor. And having read two of Betsy's books, as well as having come across several others she's edited over the years, I agree, she IS a great editor. But I did catch one mistake, misspelling of the name of the drug "Aleve" before I gave up on this tome. I guess even great editors can have a bad day.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, interesting, and at some points poignant. The author tells the story of her first year as a private investigator for an agency working mostly for businesses checking out other businesses. It's a look into a world most of us won't experience ourselves - she was disappointed at how boring and grubby it often was - at the collection of odd personalities in her office, and a narrative of her romantic life and close friendships, often ridiculously dysfunctional. Good light reading, and the author sounds like a fascinating dinner guest and a funny friend.