“A delightful read for anyone tantalized by the prospect of disappearing without a trace.” —Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake
“Delivers all the lo-fi spy shenanigans and caught-red-handed schadenfreude you’re hoping for.” —NPR
“A lively romp.” —The Boston Globe
“Grim fun.” —The New York Times
“Brilliant topic, absorbing book.” —The Seattle Times
“The most literally escapist summer read you could hope for.” —The 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 disappear—but
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, he’s not dead—or 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 you’ll 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 lives—and
their families—to start again.