A fan asked me a while back if I spent
all my time daydreaming. With a day job, the official answer is no,
but I have to admit, I daydream a lot. Sure, I work hard bringing
those daydreams to life, but story ideas are everywhere and I find
the best ones often sneak up on me when I’m not looking for them
directly.
My first published romantic suspense
novel, The Thief, was sparked in part by dinner with friends.
Or rather our discussion over dinner about a recent class my friends
had taken on geographic profiling.
When you have friends in the military
sometimes dinner topics stretch the envelope, but it never fails to
be interesting. They were so enthused about a new approach that
focuses not just on profiling a particular kind of person, but rather
narrowing down the search area for a particular kind of criminal.
Greatly simplified, geographic profiling means if you study the
criminal patterns (at the scene or within the case at large), you get
clues to point you toward the area where the criminal most likely
lives.
Fascinating stuff, but my brain locked
on to a different detail. Call it a novelist's quirk.
The part of their stories that caught
my attention were the tales of cooperation (or lack thereof) between
law enforcement agencies. Even different departments within the same
agency often had trouble sharing the right information to close a
case quickly.
Thus the team of RC Investigations, a
consulting firm, was born. They employ techniques like geographic
profiling to connect the dots and get information to the right
authorities. Smaller, and more mobile, they can assist on baffling
cases going cold, or even take on private cases that might not get
the right attention through typical legal means.
Now, six books later, RC Investigations
is taking big strides, and going after a spy who is supposed to be
dead.
You can find a
list of my books at my Amazon author page:
http://www.amazon.com/V.R.-Marks/e/B009KLZKEG
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