Playing Dead

Playing Dead: A Journey through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood, 244 pages

Many people, it seems, have pondered faking their own death.  Some enjoy the fantasy of the ultimate escape from the traps they have fallen into.  Others long to pit their own cleverness against 21st century technology and investigative techniques.  Every year, a small number of people actually try it.  Why they do it is mostly predictable - usually to escape money or legal problems.  How they try it is the more interesting matter.

Unfortunately, Playing Dead keeps the discussion of how people fake their own deaths largely in the background.  Instead, it profiles a half dozen people involved in death fraud, some as fraudsters, others as investigators, and a couple who are somewhere in between.  The book has the chatty tone of a true crime podcast, so that the reader's enjoyment is likely to be largely a matter of how much they like the author.