Playing Dead, Elizabeth Greenwood

Playing Dead is darkly charmingly bizarre.

Greenwood, who graduated with a six figure yoke of debt on her shoulders tells her teacher colleague at dinner one night that she’s going to make a quick buck by a) doing a TED talk that will go viral or b) she’ll run away to Belize. Her colleague suggests an option c) fake your own death and claim on the insurance.

Intrigued, Greenwood googles ‘fake your own death’ and enters a world just below the surface of the everyday. She meets people who will help you disappear and investigators who will stop at nothing to resurrect you.

Pseudocide for most people is a fantasy, cutting all ties with the rat race and running away to laze on a sundrenched beach. The reality Greenwood finds is a lot harder. She interviews fraudsters who attempted to use a faked death to escape prison, sees the collateral damage caused to those left behind and travels to the Philippines where pseudocide is more like a cottage industry. She receives phone calls from beyond the grave from pop royalty and spends time with a man who having successfully paddled into oblivion made some changes to his appearance and moved into the house next door to his wife as her handyman!

Love Mary Roach, Jon Ronson or Eric Larson? then this is the book for you.