Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud

â€œA delightful read for anyone tantalized by the prospect of disappearing without a trace.â€ â€”Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake

â€œDelivers all the lo-fi spy shenanigans and caught-red-handed schadenfreude youâ€™re hoping for.â€ â€”NPR

â€œA lively romp.â€ â€”The Boston Globe

â€œGrim fun.â€ â€”The New York Times

â€œBrilliant topic, absorbing book.â€ â€”The Seattle Times

â€œThe most literally escapist summer read you could hope for.â€ â€”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 disappearâ€”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, heâ€™s not deadâ€”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 youâ€™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 livesâ€”and their familiesâ€”to start again.

Country	USA
Author	Elizabeth Greenwood
Binding	Kindle Edition
EISBN	9781476739366
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
NumberOfPages	273
PublicationDate	2016-08-09
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
ReleaseDate	2016-08-09
Studio	Simon & Schuster

Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud

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