I like crime fiction and suspense thrillers. I like them to be accurate, as much as possible. As an author myself, I set high standards for my own work. Of course, occasionally I screw up. It is inevitable. In a recent entry in my Arthurian series, I made the error of mentioning, in a list of foods served at a banquet, potatoes. Yes, I knew that potatoes were not around in 5th century Britain. I made a mistake, one that nobody else caught either until one vigilant reader saw it. The reader claimed that she had almost tossed the book aside on reading that. I thought that was a bit extreme. Little things like that happen. But what shouldn’t happen is when authors make errors simply because they assume they know what they’re talking about. That’s bad. And it gives all of us a bad name.
Many years ago, I was talking to a bestselling author of contemporary thrillers. His books were set in exotic locales around the globe. I mentioned that it must be great to travel to all of those places to do research. “Oh,” he said, offhandedly, “I never go to those countries until after the book is written. I use travel brochures.” His answer bothered me then, and it bothers me now. Recently, while reading a thriller, on the bestseller lists, I was reminded of how dangerous that was. The Killing Way Review.
This particular author had set a short scene in Kuwait. In the great scheme of things, it was actually a scene that could have been cut without harming the broader plot. Would that it had. The author’s protagonist, sitting at a restaurant in Kuwait, orders a vodka martini. Upon reading that scene, I completely understood my reader’s reaction to potatoes in …
