I’ve had the privilege of serving alongside of Winona Kent for the past two years on the Crime Writers of Canada Board of Directors but I never knew her “Google Street View” trick until this moment. I think I may end up using it myself. Take it away, Nona.

I use Google Street View a lot. I have a terrible—no, make that nonexistent—sense of direction. If I need to be somewhere I’m not familiar with, I always pop onto Google Maps and click the little orange man in the bottom right corner, and he soon shows me what that building or house looks like from the road.

But Google Street View also has an incredibly useful role to play in the research for my Jason Davey Mystery series, whose stories are mostly set in England.

I was born in London, and I’ve been back many times. I know the city reasonably well—though I have to admit that many of my long-term memories are, by now, almost 50 years old! I’ve used Google Street View to verify and update a lot of those memories when it comes to describing locations that my hero, Jason, visits and inhabits during the course of his investigations.

Where Street View really proved its usefulness is with my current novel, Ticket to Ride. In this book, Jason is touring England with his mother’s band, Figgis Green. The story covers six different locations: Leeds, Lincoln, Norwich, Cambridge, Oxford and Tunbridge Wells.

A lot of people have remarked about how authentic my Jason stories sound, and how they’re convinced that I used to play in or manage a rock band, and that I’m completely familiar with all of the places that I’m writing about. But guess what…I’ve only ever been to Cambridge (briefly). And it was a very long time ago. Ticket to Ride is written in the first person, through Jason’s eyes, and everything Jason sees—everything he comments on and describes—is completely sourced through Google Street View’s magical lens.

So when Jason takes a walk through Lincoln, and visits the famous Cathedral, I’ve been there, for the first time, along with him, familiarizing myself with the High Bridge and the coffee shop where he stops for a snack. And when Jason and his mum have lunch In the Refectory at Norwich Cathedral and Jason runs outside to try and chase down the woman who handed him a threatening note…Google Street View. The parking lot in Norwich where all of the tour bus tires are flattened…yup. You guessed it. And Oxford…New College Lane…St Helens Passage (where a very significant murder takes place in Ticket to Ride)…Google Street View was my very best friend.

I suppose this exposes me as a bit of a fraud when it comes to familiarity with the places I’m writing about in my stories. On the other hand—with the internet, we have access to technologies that were never available to us in the good old days. And if my imagination is good enough to translate that technology into a believable narrative…I wonder what difference it really makes?

Find out more about Winona Kent and her books at www.winonakent.com.