"This might be a little off topic, but I am a writer for The Mentalist. I've read a lot of cold-reading books that try to list little facts about people, and I've been to cold-reading shows to see mentalists at work. Also, I make up this stuff for a living." - × × ×

“Patrick Jane is more of a cold-reader than Holmes is. Holmes has a huge reserve of facts, where Jane understands people psychologically, and most of his insights occur on that level. In other words, Holmes makes a study of different types of tobacco ashes, where Jane assumes your secret smoking is because you're hiding a terrible secret (or some such). Also, Jane is sometimes wrong in his assumptions, but he blows past those moments so quickly you might think he is always right. (And of course the show isn't completely realistic, and Jane is far more observant than the average man.)” - × × ×