Ransacked Room: Difference between revisions

== [[Literature]] ==

* In [[Dorothy Gilman]]'s ''[[Mrs. Pollifax|Mrs. Pollifax On Safari]]'', Mrs. Pollifax packs her case with great care and always in the same way. Because of this, she can pick up the subtle shifts that proved someone had searched it and repacked it, very neatly. (Note that tradecraft makes [[James Bond]] and Travis McGee carefully arrange things to alert them if they've been searched—Emily Pollifax is just a neat elderly lady. But that's the point.)

** In ''Ghostmaker'', Gaunt is startled awake and catches Inquisitor Lilith in his room. She assures him that she would not have done it if she had known he was there.

* Emil Karpo (a Russian cop) in Stuart A. Kaminsky's Russian mysteries did that once—as well as the usual thread, he put a single hair of his across a doorway or something, which let him know the KGB had searched his room.

* On [[Burn Notice]], CSS agent Jason Bly has Michael's apartment searched. It's a subversion in that Michael is there at the time. Also, Bly doesn't expect to find anything; he's just doing it to mess with Michael.

* In ''[[Community]]'' episode "[[Community/Recap/S2/E08 Cooperative Calligraphy|Cooperative Calligraphy]]", Jeff ends up doing this to the study room in search of Annie's pen.

* ''[[Estate of Panic]]'', similar to the above, but with adult contestants ransacking a haunted mansion filled with booby traps and unpleasant animals to find cash.

* The 1993 Australian spy series ''Secrets'' showed how this is done in real life, with the fictional intelligence agency always taking polaroids of the room beforehand so everything could be replaced.

[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]

[[Category:Plots]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]