Research in Depth

By Chester Campbell

I suppose I've become lazy the past few years while I continued to write PI mysteries set around Nashville. They haven't required much research as I'm writing about a city I've known intimately for most of my life. If I need to refresh my memory on something, all it takes is a little drive-by "research." I've also chosen subjects I'm familiar with that needed little more than Googling.

It wasn't always like this. When I started writing mystery novels in earnest, after retiring in 1989, I chose the subgenre I'd read avidly since the end of World War II, the spy story. I wrote a trilogy of international thrillers set at the end of the Cold War. They feature a disgraced former FBI agent who gets involved in espionage. None of the three sold, far a variety of reasons (I had a different agent for each of them). I've been revising them lately with an eye to putting them up as ebooks.

During this process, I've been fascinated at recalling the amount of research I did on these books. I had read extensively about the CIA and the KGB, and I bought several newer books for background. One major challenge was the variety of locations around the globe. I spent a lot of time at the library going over travel books and memoirs by people who had lived in the areas.

Locations my characters visited in the first two books included Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Chiang Mai, Thailand. At the time I wrote the stories, I had never been to Israel. Having toured the country and seen Tel Aviv in 1998, I was quite pleased at how well I had described the setting. I only made a few tweaks based on firsthand knowledge.

I toured the Southeast Asian locations in 1987 when my wife and I joined our younger son (then with Army Special Forces) and his wife on a 30-day junket that included Korea, Okinawa, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. Of course, I had also spent a year in Seoul at Fifth Air Force Headquarters in 1952-3 during the Korean War. I did additional reading on the areas while researching my spy stories.

Most of the U.S. cities in the books were ones I was familiar with. One fictional location I created was a small island off the Florida Gulf Coast. I visited the area and consulted with seamen at the Apalachicola, Florida Coast Guard Station to keep things realistic.

The last book in the trilogy has the most areas I've never seen. It includes a remote corner of Iran, parts of Ukraine, and Minsk, Belarus. It is set in the early nineties, and I did extensive research on conditions in the areas.  I also used parts of Mexico, some of which I had visited. The stories include many technical details that I researched extensively, much of it in cooperation with my "technical adviser," brother Jim, an electrical engineer.

Exporting American Pop

By Mark W. Danielson

I love traveling the globe. It’s wonderful seeing the world through other people’s eyes, exploring different cultures, and experiencing new things—but there is no escaping America’s influence overseas. Working in the cargo industry as I do, it’s clear that we import more than we export. The exception to this is our exports in entertainment and fast food. In foreign cities large and small, it’s rare to escape Starbucks, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. Coke and Pepsi are household names in any language. Movie stars appear on enormous billboards. Even Tommy Lee Jones has his face on Japanese vending machines, promoting a beverage called BOSS. Regardless of how other countries may disdain our politics, they still crave our movies, TV, music, and fast food. Some even dress to emulate their favorite stars, such as the Japanese urban cowboy I saw, boot-scooting his way through a crowded Osaka sidewalk.

Some protest that these American fast-food chains are corrupting other cultures and hurting local businesses. While this point has some credence, there is no turning back. After all, if this food wasn’t fast, cheap, and tasty, it never would have succeeded in the United States, not to mention the rest of the world. Besides, city planners had to approve each of these franchises, so don’t blame us. It’s up to them to decide how much is too much.

Disney is everywhere. Goofy, Mickey, Minnie, and Donald Duck greet visitors to Singapore’s airport, inside and out. Disney theme parks are now in Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. In Osaka, the Cinderella Chapel Hotel boasts a twenty foot Cinderella statue atop the building. I also noticed Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty stickers on a strip club’s window as I walked by, though I have no idea as to their significance. Osaka also has a Vegas-style Hotel LOVE, with The Hotel Miami right next door. Curiously, neither of these hotels caters to American tourists.

American rock and roll is being played in bars and fast food joints around the world. Even my hotel in Penang had a 1960’s American music radio station. In the bigger cities, some outdoor televisions play American music videos. American TV shows and movies are dubbed in numerous languages to accommodate foreign audiences. Sadly, the few English speaking channels often broadcast our worst TV shows, such as Jerry Springer in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I’m not sure who decides what to put on the air, but clearly what is being shown does not represent the United States any more than CNN’s limited stories represent other countries. Sadly, most news stories tend to portray nations in a negative light, which means it’s up to each citizen to accentuate the positive.

My intent here is not to cause an outcry, but rather to identify our successful overseas exports. For better or worse, it’s nice to know that the United States offers the world something that makes people happy, and for that, I’m grateful. As much as it appalls me that our fast food chains are everywhere, kids around the world always smile while chomping their burgers and fries. For them, life is even better if they can eat while watching Sponge Bob Squarepants. So with that, I wish everyone a safe and Happy New Year.