A practical Howdunit guide that shows fiction writers how real investigators locate runaways abductees and people who have deliberately disappeared. It explains who hires investigators why people go missing the legal and ethical boundaries and the step by step methods professionals use to build a paper trail conduct interviews tap public records and follow leads until a subject is found. It includes case vignettes checklists resource leads and story sparks to help writers craft believable plots. The book is a practical guide for authors in the Howdunit series. Faron begins with a profile of investigators and the various categories of missing persons, including runaway youth, parental abductions, fraudsters, and people who have gone into hiding. She then discusses methods that were current in 1997 and still provide insight into investigative logic, such as systematically searching public records, court and vital records, telephone directories, and archives, using interviews and pretexting, and organizing and cross-referencing data to identify patterns. She discusses client psychology, risks, and ethics, and provides forms, checklists, and examples that writers can use to create believable scenes and plot developments. The work includes an index and explains how to go from a name and a few isolated facts to a plausible lead.