If you, like us, grew up devouring Nancy Drew novels and fantasising about being the next Jessica Fletcher then Rebecca Jane might just have your dream job.

The 29-year-old launched her own private investigators, the Real Lady Detective Agency, in 2009 in Manchester after she discovered her first husband was having a string of affairs.

Five years on, she now has 15 people working for her, as well as a network of private investigators, in the UK and the US.

We spoke to Jane about being a PI, the fascinating cases she's worked on and the differences between investigations in different countries.

When you’re thinking about investigating someone, what’s the first thing that you should do?

Talk to your partner. It sounds really simple but that's the first thing to do. Try and be as open and honest as possible. When, and if, that fails, look for the warning signs. Some people are definitely in denial though. To be honest you’re either crazy or you’re in denial. Very few people keep a level head in these situations. I was one of those people. I was insane. The paranoia of what you’re other half is up to every five minutes will do that to you.

Is there anything you shouldn’t do?

Don’t nag. It won’t get you anywhere and it’ll just cause more conflict. You should communicate why you feel like that and what the reasons are behind why you feel like that but once you’ve had that conversation and you’ve cleared it out with each other that’s where you should leave it. If you’re going to start pestering and badgering, you’ll get yourself into a frenzie. Also, if they’re not doing anything, they might think, ‘well, she thinks I am anyway, so I might as well’.

If you want to do your own DIY detective work, just be careful. It can go wrong so easily. People who try to follow their partners will make the person more paranoid.

You knew your first husband was cheating, how did you get proof?

I didn’t get proof straight away. It was all gut instinct. He didn’t turn up from work a lot of the time. Money had gone missing. His phone would ring at four in the morning. But I wanted the proof. So I rang up PIs. But they all treated me like I was an insane woman. They were right but it’s horrible when you feel like that and no one cares. I wanted someone to listen to me and I didn’t get that. So I spoke to my friends, a lot like in the film and we did our own work.

What was the process? How did you catch him eventually?

We literally did what they did in the film. We did a lot of following him around in the car, and a lot of sitting around looking through binoculars. We did a lot of eating Doritos in the car, watching films, while he was in the pub, and we’d be looking through the pub window looking through binoculars to see what he was up to.

What did you see?

He was all over various women. And then he kissed one. Right in front of us. So I went straight into the pub. By the time I got in there, he’d obviously stopped kissing her. I told him what I’d seen and he told me to leave the pub. I later found out that he was seeing about six other women.

After you discovered his infidelity, when did you decide to set up your own private investigators agency?

After about two and a bit years. By that point I'd also had my own affair. I wouldn’t say that was the right way to deal with everything but it's what you do when you're finding everything difficult. Before I set up the agency, I was in property but then it went bust and I didn't have a job.

I was so unhappy in my marriage, and the other relationship I was having was a total mess, which made me realise I needed to do something really drastic. So I divorced my husband. I basically told him not to come home one day after he’d done another one of his vanishing acts. He rang up to say he was sorry, I was running a bath for my daughter at the time, and I just told him ‘don’t bother’. And that was the last time I ever spoke to him. A couple of weeks’ later I decided to get rid of the other guy too. That’s when I decided to set up the agency. Everyone thought I was so mad.

In conversation with real-life private investigator, Rebecca Jane