As you can see, I’ve set my thrillers in real locations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Why?

Because I loved the visuals of these locations and I know them. They have sentimental value; I grew up visiting these places often.

In my first hard boiled kosher thriller, The Torah Codes, the sarcastic, world-weary protagonist Nathan Yirmorshy starts off enjoying ice cream on Piedmont Ave. in Oakland. He later spends some time on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, holding a clandestine meet-up in front of a popular bookstore and discovering Bible codes at a spiritual bookstore. The story builds up to a shootout at Fort Point in San Francisco.

In 36 Righteous, A Serial Killer’s Hit List, the second in The Torah Codes series, Nathan follows leads that take him to a young Robin Hood-type skateboarder at MacArthur BART station. They have a heart-to-heart chat at the top of UC Berkeley’s campanile tower. Things heat up at a Toys-R-Us in Fremont.

In the final book of the series, Bullets Aren’t Kosher, he spends a lot of time at a diner at East 18th Street by Oakland’s Lake Merritt. He has a job in San Francisco that leads him to run for his life, dodging gunmen in the cinematic Hyatt Regency by the Ferry Building.

The chase continues at Pier 39 in the Dungeon Ride along Fisherman’s Wharf, where he gets caught and taken to Alcatraz Island and put in an isolation cell.

After escaping Alcatraz in a different way, he escapes motorcycles chasing him at Golden Gate Park and finds refuge at the famous TransAmerica pyramid building… Until villains chase him up to the tippy top where the tiny light beacon chamber is.

Have you visited any of these Bay Area locations?

I’d love to hear about your experiences in these places. And if you’ve read the books, did the real-world settings help make the story come alive for you?