Feb 06 2011
An introduction to bounty hunting
Bounty hunters may be a useful point of reference for your superhero story:
- Like most superheroes, bounty hunters have a non-government job that entails some violence.
- They hunt criminals without all of the assets of a police force (authority, the ability to threaten prosecution for noncooperation, forensics labs, generous access to state records, virtually unlimited backup, etc).
Learning more about bounty hunters may give you some ideas about how to write superheroes cracking cases, so I’d recommend checking out this Washington Post article (hat-tip: Contra Glove). In particular, I liked the tactic of calling the fugitive’s cell phone*, posing as a FedEx dispatcher and then asking the fugitive if he will be available tomorrow for a package delivery. “Can you confirm the street address?”
(I also found the use of MySpace pretty hilarious, but I’m sort of hoping that your Lex Luthor isn’t on MySpace).
*You can get somebody’s number by asking family members, friends, disgruntled exes or sometimes the cell company.
