Sightings

I took advantage of a visit to metro DC this past weekend for a friend's 50th birthday celebration (and many more, Joel!) to scout some locations I'm using for my upcoming novel, Dark Network, the sequel to Faithless Elector.

I'm not from DC, and I have never lived there, but my wife and I have good friends there, and we visit often.  Nevertheless, siting places for clandestine meetings, udon noodles and murder was a problem.


Faithless Elector was situated primarily in Seattle, which I know well, having lived there for over 20 years.  Though I now live in Philadelphia, I have intimate knowledge of the University of Washington campus, the Pike Place Market and the Arboretum.  For the first book, I used Google Streetview to refresh my memory of a place, or to calculate distances.

But for the meetings and mayhem in Dark Network, I was forced to rely almost entirely on Google Streetview to find and establish the locations.  I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked when I was finally able to do research on the ground.

There were six sites I used in and around DC that I found using Streetview.  I was able to get to four of them. While visiting them suggested some tweaks and local color I had not contemplated before, I did not have to abandon them.  The parking lot in Bethesda, MD, (yes, I know--another parking garage!) is as spooky as I thought/hoped it would be.  The 'drops' my conspirators use in Rock Creek and Lansburgh Parks work very well.  At no point, fortunately, did I get to a site and think "Oh, no! There's a security camera right there."  Even better, I was able to confirm that there was a camera right where I wanted it...which I had first seen on Streeview.


In fact, one area near the DC Armory is better than I had hoped.

I'm in the home stretch for Dark Network.  When it's finally out, I will be very interested to hear from DC-area readers about whether the sites I've chosen 'work' for them.

 James McCrone is the author of Faithless Elector, a suspense-thriller, Publishers Weekly calls a “fast-moving topical thriller.”  Its “surprising twists add up to a highly suspenseful read.” The sequel, Dark Network, is coming soon.

Faithless Elector, by James McCrone is available through Amazon.
If you live in Philadelphia, pick up a copy at Head House Books -or- Penn Book Center