Suppose you want to know who scored the winning goal in last week’s big game? Or perhaps you want to find out whether that new pizza place delivers. Maybe you need information on flights to Toronto. Chances are that you’ll do an online search for information. And chances are very good that you’ll use Google. We’re so accustomed now to doing Google searches that it’s easy to forget that Google’s only been incorporated for 27 years. In the larger scheme of things, that’s no time at all. As you can well imagine, modern police and other professional detectives use Google, too, – a lot. It’s astounding how much information can be turned up if one’s reasonably good at googling (yes, that verb is in the OED). So, it’s no surprise that we see the mighty search engine that is Google in crime fiction.

For instance, in Jill Edmondson’s Blood and Groom, Toronto PI Sasha Jackson gets a new client, Christine Arvisais. It seems that Christine’s ex-fiancé, Gordon Hanes, was shot on what would have been their wedding day. Plenty of people think that Christine is guilty, but she claims she is innocent. Sasha dislikes her new client, but a fee is a fee, so she agrees to take the case. She gets information about the victim, Christine, their families, and much more just from Google searches. In fact, she even muses about how much people reveal about themselves online. That information helps Sasha to make connections between Gordon’s death and that of at least one other person. And, in the end, she finds out the truth about the murders.

Hannah Dennison’s Murder at Honeychurch Hall introduces Katherine ‘Kat’ Stanford. As the novel begins, she’s the host of a popular TV show, Fakes and Treasures. But she’s decided to step away from the pressure of the ‘TV life,’ and open an antiques business with her mother, Iris. Everything changes when Iris calls her. It seems Iris has changed her mind about the antiques business and has taken a place on the estate of Honeychurch Hall, in Little Dipperton, Devon. Kat heads directly there, only to find that her mother had injured her hand. So, Kat arranges to stay for a bit, to help her mother. While there, she finds some hidden secrets, and some odd things happen. First, the nanny at Honeychurch Hall goes missing. Then, some things are stolen. Then, the housekeeper is found dead. Kat’s drawn into it all and works to find out what is going on. And she uses Google to answer some questions she has about her own family and about Little Dipperton’s past.

In Chris McGeorge’s Now You See Me, newly successful author Robin Ferringham gets drawn into the mysterious disappearance of five young people. A young man, Matthew McConnell, calls him from prison, saying that he has a message from Robin’s wife, Samantha, who’s been missing, presumed dead, for three years. At first, Robin doesn’t want to believe Matthew, but the message contains something that only Samantha would know. So, he hears Matthew out. It seems that Matthew was escorting five of his friends on a trip through the Standege Canal. All six went in on one side, but only Matthew emerged from the other. Everyone assumes Matthew’s responsible for whatever happened; in fact, that’s why he’s in prison. But he claims to be innocent. He wants Robin to help him get out of prison. In exchange, he’ll tell Robin everything he knows about what happened to Samantha. Robin agrees, and travels to Marsden, where everything happened. He needs background on the case, so he makes a lot of use of Google as he pieces together the events of that say. He also uses Google to keep up with anything he can find about Samantha. In the end, that information helps him find out the truth.

Cat Connor’s Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Tracey is an Upper Hutt, New Zealand-based PI. She co-owns a company called Wherefore Art Thou and has become quite accustomed to looking for people who don’t want to be found. As a former New Zealand Intelligence member, she has access to the ‘dark web’ and a lot of other sophisticated search tools. But she and her co-workers find plenty of information just by using Google. Full names, occupations, and social media posts are all available that way. And, like Sasha Jackson above, she wonders at the amount of information people make available online. She herself knows the security procedures needed to stay invisible or close to it, but that doesn’t mean everyone else knows them…

Paul Pilkington’s Long Gone features Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Paul Cullen, who works for the British Transport Police. His daughter, Amy, gets concerned when her roommate, Natalie Long, doesn’t return after a weekend at a potential employer called Brand New. The whole event was a sort of group interview, with all of the candidates expected to compete in some test activities. The winner would get the job. Natalie was excited to have gotten an invitation, but after the weekend, she sent Amy an odd text, and hasn’t been heard from since. Amy asks her father to investigate, and he agrees to find out what he can, although he’s limited. Brand New is an unusual sort of company; its purpose is to market its clients’ brands, but beyond that, not much is known about it. But Cullen uses Google to find out what he can, and he goes to visit the place himself. And it turns out that things are going on there that the company does not want to make public…

Most of us in these times use Google to find information we need. Or we ask Siri or Alexa, which still basically means a Google search. That way of looking things up has become so common we may not even think about it. It’s certainly a quick and efficient way to find things out, so it’s no wonder we see Google being used in crime fiction. Don’t believe me? Google it for yourself.

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Amanda Rose Riley