From SRP author Mark Posey:
I sometimes wonder what would happen if someone looked at my Google search history without knowing I’m a thriller writer.
Not a friend. They already know I’m a little odd. I mean someone from law enforcement. Imagine opening a laptop and finding searches like these:
- How long can someone remain unconscious?
- Can a helicopter land on a moving train?
- What happens if a silencer gets wet?
- Average response time for the Secret Service.
- How much force does it take to break a nose?
- Does bleach actually destroy DNA?
- How long can someone survive in cold water?
- Which countries don’t extradite?
Now imagine those searches sitting comfortably beside:
- Best tomato varieties for Edmonton.
- Plant-based protein sources.
- Why are my cucumbers bitter?
- Community garden etiquette.
- Homemade hummus recipe.
If an investigator ever saw that combination, I don’t know whether they’d arrest me or recommend I spend more time outdoors.
The truth is that writing thrillers means becoming intensely curious about subjects you sincerely hope you’ll never need in real life. Every novel sends me down another rabbit hole. One week I’m researching diplomatic immunity. The next I’m learning how emergency trauma medicine works. After that I’m reading about surveillance techniques, lock picking, explosive residues, or whether it’s physically possible to jump from one rooftop to another without immediately regretting the decision.
Research is one of the great joys of writing. The more accurately I understand how something works, the more convincing the story becomes. Readers don’t necessarily notice every factual detail, but they can usually tell when an author has done the homework. Of course, the downside is that your search history starts looking less like an author’s and more like a criminal mastermind who can’t quite make up his mind.
My browser has no idea whether I’m trying to save someone’s life, end it, grow vegetables, edit a manuscript, or bake sourdough. To be fair, neither do I until I’ve had my second coffee.
The really strange part is how normal all of this becomes. I’ll spend twenty minutes researching how long fingerprints survive on stainless steel, close that tab, and immediately search for “best fertilizer for tomatoes.” It doesn’t even occur to me that those two thoughts don’t usually belong in the same afternoon.
My wife is a novelist too, so she doesn’t even blink anymore. If I mention that I’m trying to determine the effective range of a sniper rifle, she’ll nod thoughtfully and ask whether I figured it out. Five minutes later she’ll be researching Victorian poisons or the gestation period of dragons. Around here, Google search histories aren’t evidence. They’re dinner conversation.
So, if anyone from the RCMP is reading this, I can explain everything. It wasn’t me. It was my characters.
— Mark