Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud
By Elizabeth Greenwood
Simon & Schuster

Gone Girl may not have been based on true events, but the “crime” of faking one’s own death is a familiar one. Remember canoeing con man John Darwin, who fooled even his own children into thinking he had drowned? That audacious act, under­taken with the help of his wife, was a life-insurance scam, but Elizabeth Greenwood (who meets Darwin for her book) tells how different kinds of people commit “pseudocide” for different reasons. Another interviewee is Frank Ahearn, who, for up to US$30,000, helps people to disappear. Many of his male clients seek his assistance because of money problems, while women are trying to escape violence (stalkers, abusive husbands).

Greenwood herself contemplates vanishing when her debts grow to six digits and she can only see two options: going to jail or slipping through the cracks. One assumes she chose instead to write this book, but not before proving that it’s not hard to procure a death certificate, which she does in the Philippines. Fascinating yet uneven, Playing Dead includes how-to advice while underscoring that pretending to be dead is not a crime. Readers contemplating such an exit will first have to get off the internet.
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