I took advantage of a visit to metro DC  for a friend’s 50th birthday celebration (and many more, Joel!) to do some location scouting for my upcoming novel, Dark Network, (available October 20!) the second Imogen Trager novel and follow up to Faithless Elector

Lansburgh Park

I’m not from DC, and I’ve 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.

The first half of 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.  It worked pretty well.

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

Rock Creek Park

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 hadn’t contemplated before, I did not have to abandon any of 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 even better than I had hoped!

Dark Network is available for sale October 20, 2017.

When it’s finally out, I’ll 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 the suspense-thrillers, Faithless Elector, and Dark Network. Publishers Weekly calls Faithless Elector a “fast-moving topical thriller.”  Its “surprising twists add up to a highly suspenseful read.”
Dark Network, is on-sale October 20.

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.  Follow this blog, and like James’s FB page.