[LMB] OT: When Favourite Authors Screw Up

[louann at millerdome.com]

> From: Raye Johnsen <raye_j at yahoo.com>
 
> Anyone else encountered something like that, where
> what should be a casually passed-over aside hits just
> the right way to reveal a sad lack of research, and
> colours the rest of the book?

Not quite the same thing, but the latest Kathy Reichs mystery (Bones & Something-or-other) had a stylistic error that startled me. Midway through the book Brennan has asked a linguist to compare some teenaged poems with a recently published poetry book (the author would then be in her fifties) to see if they were written by the same person.

When the linguist reports back, his answer is yes. But he refuses to _say_ yes until he's unfolded three or four pages on the history of comparative linguistics, his techniques, etc. etc. Brennan sat through it a whole lot more patiently than I did, I'll tell you. I was startled because Reichs normally writes tight clean prose. Not "I've suffered for my Arte, now it's your turn."

Louann