I’VE DONE A LOT OF TRAVELING IN SEARCH OF LOCATIONS FOR MY STORIES, SO I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SEE SOME OF THE LOCATIONS THAT INSPIRED ME OR APPEAR IN MY STORIES.
In HIDDEN AGENDA, I was inspired by this gate and the location of the home at the top of the driveway to create the fictional setting I used as the home of the Carletons. The setting was perfect as a place where an unexpected killing would take place…
I was in Egypt, just outside of Cairo, looking for locations for the novel ABDUCTED. (I finally settled on the port city of Alexandria). I wanted to get a feel for what it would be like to be part of a camel caravan through the desert in Yemen, an event that plays a major role in my novel ABDUCTED. I got to experience the heat, the bleakness of the terrain, and the smell of the camels. And boy, did they ever smell…
Oh, yeah, and what they say about camels is true. They do like to spit…
A typical street scene in Alexandria, Egypt. In the summer, Alexandria is a major beach resort town as Egyptians and others from the Middle East come there to beat the heat along the waterfront. This is the city of the convention attended by the American virologist who disappears in ABDUCTED.
While on location in St. Petersburg, Russia, I came across this apartment building near the harbor which became the home for my character Alexei Kuznetsov, in MONEY FOR LOVE. From a distance, these newer buildings look very modern, but up close, you can see the shabbiness. They are the Russian version of projects.
This is the main building for the LA County Coroner’s Office. This location, in East Los Angeles, figures prominently in a number of my stories. The autopsies are conducted in the basement, and it’s not unusual to see a line of body-bagged bodies on gurneys in the hallway that are waiting to be stored or examined. The autopsy area was described in detail in MONEY FOR LOVE.
This photo was taken in the Cold Case Unit office, part of the Robbery-Homicide Division, in the old Parker Center Headquarters building in downtown, Los Angeles. It was very crowded, but shortly after this was taken, RHD was moved over to the new Police Administration Building, two blocks away, and now the unit enjoys working in a much larger area. This room appeared in HIDDEN AGENDA.
About a dozen or so of the cubicles to the left side of this photo are now the new home of the LAPD RHD Cold Case Unit. As you can see, the room is gigantic. Midway down the room is the Financial Crimes Section. The building is L shaped, and there is another room equally as large on the other side of the door on the immediate right of this photo. It houses the bulk of the Robbery-Homicide Division, where the detectives in my stories work to solve the most difficult of homicide cases. This location figures prominently in most of my stories.
Behind this gate, up the road, is No. 10 Downing Street, home of the Prime Minister, in London. This location and the area around it figure prominently in the opening of my story WEB OF BETRAYAL.
A Bedouin scout who is watching over an encampment in Egypt. In ABDUCTION, scenes like this are played out as a Makki caravan crosses the desert in Yemen on the way towards Oman.
Muscat, Oman, the old town. Farther up the coastline is where the water crossing was made to the coastline of Iran in ABDUCTED.
A freighter in the harbor at Alexandria, Egypt. This ship was the inspiration for the one used by the Iranians to smuggle a human cargo in ABDUCTED.
MORE PHOTOS TO COME LATER.