Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud

Suffering under the weight of major debt can lead you to make some unexpected choices. For Elizabeth Greenwood, it had her considering faking her own death. But as she began investigating the concept and how feasible it was, she discovered a world of desperate people, con artists, and bureaucratic obstacles she never expected.

Playing Dead puts the ultimate escape under the microscope, examining just what it takes to pull off the adult equivalent of running off to join the circus. She presents numerous stories of those who went to extreme lengths to vanish without a trace, what drove them to it, and what led to each plan’s failure. Along the way, Elizabeth gains a new perspective on what those people left behind, and what it truly means to disappear.

It’s a fascinating read, one that mixes humor and drama with style, one that ventures all over the globe to explore the grey area between “reported dead” and really dead. Playing Dead might be all about pulling the wool over people’s eyes, but it certainly opened mine.