Fascinating story overall, but this particular type of sting seems like it goes too far.
But the police stayed focused on Alan. He was their main suspect, their one hope of solving Beverly’s murder. And by studying his mind—his tenuous grip on reality, his crushing loneliness, his desire, more than anything, for a buddy to go fishing with—they had learned enough about him to try something radical: a Mr. Big sting. It’s a kind of play, a guerrilla theatre whose proscenium is the unsuspecting mind of a Canadian citizen, and it’s been staged hundreds of times since the RCMP developed the current incarnation in the 1990s. The Mr. Big sting is one of the most controversial tactics police use—so much so that it’s banned in many other countries.
Here’s how it works: you need at least two undercover police officers for the main operation, plus dozens of other cops in supporting roles. The first officer meets the target—in this case, Alan—and befriends him. The hope is that the first undercover cop will lure the suspect into committing increasingly serious crimes. Then he introduces him to Mr. Big, another undercover officer, posing as the head of a crime family or a drug kingpin, who can offer the suspect protection, money or even friendship in exchange for a confession to the worst thing he’s ever done: the crime they’re trying to charge him with. Conjuring and executing a Mr. Big turns officers into actors and bureaucracies into belletrists, trading forensic science for fiction. From the whole cloth of this world they fashion another one, invent their characters, deploy their plots.
