Teaching students to write persuasive messages is a critical feature of any undergraduate business communications course. For the persuasive writing module in the author's course, students write a persuasive message on the basis of the four-part indirect pattern often used for sales or fund-raising messages. The course text she uses identifies these four components by their rhetorical functions: gain attention, build interest, reduce resistance, and motivate action. Although students quickly grasp the arrangement and rhetorical function of these components, they find it challenging when they write their own persuasive messages to integrate them into one fluid, cohesive message. Inspired by popular forensics-based crime shows, the author decided to capitalize on the currency of these television programs with her students, and on the field of linguistic forensics, to frame an investigative approach to analysing the persuasive message and the connections between its constituent parts. In this article, the author describes a small in-class group activity which engages students in multiple learning activities as they read, analyse, evaluate, and discuss a model persuasive message through a structured process of inquiry and self-directed discovery. (Contains 2 figures.)