Table of Contents

• Start With a Location Research Checklist for Writers
  • The Non-Negotiables: Law, Language, and Landscape
• Using Maps for Novel Research: From Street View to Terrain
  • Reading a Map the Way a Criminal Would
  • Concrete Tools and What Each One Is Good For
  • Reading a City Like a Local: Transport, Districts, and Lighting
• Crime Fiction Police Procedure Research: Getting the Details Right
• Writing an Authentic Foreign Setting Without Leaving Your Desk
  • Remote Research Versus On-the-Ground Research
• Avoiding Stereotypes and Getting Cultural Details Right
• Turning Research Into Convincing Scenes
• Conclusion: Research That Serves the Story
• Frequently Asked Questions

Last Updated: October 8, 2026

Start With a Location Research Checklist for Writers

Researching international crime novel locations starts with three questions: what does the law allow, what language do people actually speak, and what does the landscape do to a body, a car, or a chase? Get those wrong and readers who know the place will close the book.

This guide from Arnold Van Der Vegt draws on the travel-shaped settings behind our own mystery and adventure novels, including the Moy Conspiracy and the Jeremy and Melissa Mystery Adventure series. Below, we’ll show you the research workflow we use before a single scene gets written.

A location research checklist for writers is a short list of facts you must confirm before you describe a foreign place. It covers law, language, landscape, transport, and daily rhythm. Here is the version we run:

• Which police force has jurisdiction, and what is it called?
• What is the legal age for drinking, driving, and owning a firearm?
• What language is spoken on the street, not just in guidebooks?
• What is the weather in the month your story is set?
• How do people get around, and how long does that take?
• What sounds and smells define the place at night?

The Non-Negotiables: Law, Language, and Landscape

Law decides what your characters can do. Language decides how they sound. Landscape decides what slows them down.

Check the current rules on a country’s official government site rather than a travel blog. Legal ages, weapons rules, and police powers change, and a novel set this year needs this year’s facts.

Language matters more than most writers admit. A phrasebook gives you greetings; it does not give you the way a tired detective answers a phone. Listen to recorded news bulletins from the region to catch rhythm and formality.

Landscape is not scenery. It is logistics. Distance, terrain, and climate decide whether your chase works at all.

Using Maps for Novel Research: From Street View to Terrain

Using maps for novel research means layering three views, street level for texture, satellite for distance, and terrain for what a road actually costs your character in time and effort, then reading those layers the way a criminal or a detective would.

Street View shows you shopfronts, kerbs, and where the light falls. Satellite view shows you how far the airport really is from the old town. Terrain view shows you the hill your character cannot run up. But for a crime novel, the useful question is not “what does this place look like?” It is “what does this place make possible or impossible?”

Reading a Map the Way a Criminal Would

Start with exits. A cul-de-sac, a dead-end laneway, or a single bridge turns a chase into a trap. Count the ways out of every location your plot depends on, and if there is only one, decide whether that is the point.

Then look at sightlines. Satellite view lets you trace what a watcher can see from a parked car, a café window, or a rooftop. Long, straight boulevards in planned cities give a tail nowhere to hide; medieval street patterns in older quarters do the opposite.

Finally, check the boundaries. Many cities are split across police jurisdictions, council areas, or even national borders. A body found two streets from a frontier, or a pursuit that crosses from one force’s patch into another’s, changes who is in charge and how fast anyone responds. Draw those lines on your map before you write the scene.

Concrete Tools and What Each One Is Good For

• Street-level imagery (Google Street View, Mapillary, and similar), best for shopfronts, signage, kerbs, and the small visual details that make a street feel lived in. Coverage is uneven, so check the capture date before you trust it.
• Satellite and aerial imagery, best for distance, building footprints, car parks, and industrial land. Imagery can be years old, so new construction may not appear.
• Terrain and elevation layers, best for working out walking times, sightlines, and whether a route is plausible on foot. A 200-metre climb changes a scene more than a 200-metre walk.
• Public transport maps and timetables, best for working out how quickly a character can leave an area, and how late the last service runs.
• Official cadastral or land-registry maps, best for property boundaries, ownership patterns, and who legally controls a piece of ground.

Cross-check anything that matters against at least two sources. Map data lags behind reality, and a road that appears on a satellite image may now be a construction site.

Reading a City Like a Local: Transport, Districts, and Lighting

Transport shapes plot. A city with a fast metro lets your character vanish in minutes. A city with one bridge does not. Look up the actual frequency of services at the hour your scene takes place, a train every four minutes and a train every forty minutes produce very different stories.

Districts carry meaning. Wealth, industry, and history sit in different postcodes, and locals know it instantly. Naming the right suburb tells readers more than a page of description. Government statistical agencies publish suburb-level data on income, ancestry, and household type, which is a faster route to accuracy than guessing from photographs.

Lighting sets mood and time. Coastal cities in the southern hemisphere get long summer evenings; northern cities do not. Confirm sunrise and sunset for your story’s month using a public almanac or astronomical calculator, and remember that daylight saving shifts the clock in some places and not others.

Crime Fiction Police Procedure Research: Getting the Details Right

Crime fiction police procedure research is where most international novels quietly fall apart. Rank structures, arrest powers, and evidence rules differ by country, and readers notice when a detective acts like an American cop in a foreign city.

Start with the national police service’s own website. Many publish plain-language explanations of ranks, complaints processes, and public powers. Where a country has separate federal and local forces, name the right one for your scene.

Then decide what your story needs. A procedural detail only earns its place if it changes what a character can do. If it does not, cut it.

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Writing an Authentic Foreign Setting Without Leaving Your Desk

Writing an authentic foreign setting from home is possible, but only if you use sources that were made by people who live there, for people who live there.

Local news outlets are the single best resource. They carry weather, traffic, court reporting, and small daily detail that travel writing never includes. Read them for a week before you write.

Reference works help too. National libraries, university repositories, and government statistical agencies publish material that is free and reliable.

Remote Research Versus On-the-Ground Research

Remote research wins on cost and speed. On-the-ground research wins on the senses: how a street sounds at 6am, how a market smells, how locals treat a stranger.

If you cannot travel, borrow the senses from people who have. Recorded walking tours, local radio, and documentary footage fill gaps that text cannot. What most guides miss is that a single hour of ambient audio teaches you more about a place’s pace than ten articles.

If you can travel, go where residents go. Supermarkets, train stations, and suburban streets beat landmarks every time.

Avoiding Stereotypes and Getting Cultural Details Right

Stereotypes come from writing the postcard version of a place. Avoiding them means writing specific people doing specific things on an ordinary Tuesday.

Check who actually lives there. Most cities are mixed, and a cast that matches the census reads as real. Government statistical agencies publish this data openly.

Then check your details against more than one source. If every description of a country mentions the same three foods and one festival, you are reading a stereotype, not a culture.

Turning Research Into Convincing Scenes

Research becomes story only when it costs a character something. A detail that does not create friction is trivia.

Use the rule of one: one legal obstacle, one language problem, one landscape feature per scene. That is enough to make a place feel real without turning the page into a travelogue.

Let characters misunderstand things. A foreigner getting a local custom slightly wrong is more convincing than one who glides through perfectly.

Conclusion: Research That Serves the Story

The hard part of researching international crime novel locations is knowing when to stop. Research that never reaches the page is just a hobby.

At Arnold Van Der Vegt, our own novels are built from real travel and observation, and the settings carry the plot rather than decorate it. If you want to see how that reads on the page, start with Moy Conspiracy, our adult crime novel, or the Jeremy and Melissa Mystery Adventure series for younger readers. Each one puts you somewhere unfamiliar and keeps you there.

Get started with Arnold Van Der Vegt and see how much a setting can do.