Inaccuracies in fiction

[HoppyHat]

Do they bother you? I realise I am annoyed/disappointed by simple "mistakes" which surely a decent editor should notice?

A couple of examples

A very very popular novel. Set in modern day London. Character regularly gets the bus from A to B along a named road all of which exist in real life. But they don't use the correct bus number! Nothing bad happens on the bus, the driver isn't awful, nothing libellous. So why not use the correct bus number?

I've just finished a book which I really liked. The author is American. But part of the book is set in a posh English school in the 1950s. The headteacher calls the season following summer "Fall". And says (more than once) "you need to write your sister" (or similar) not write TO.

To me these things are so obvious and quite jarring. Anyone else?

I hate it when, in detective novels, paramedics come to just pick up the body. Not to attempt resus but to collect the corpse, no they don't. That would be a pricate ambulance which doesn't even look like an ambulance, more like a dark coloured transit or MPV with blacked out windows.

I’ve got a strong feeling that in those days, money could get you into Oxford just as well as brains!

And Bertie was a Rackets Blue so maybe sporting talent came into it too.

I read a lot of sci fi and authors can get away with a lot because it's completely made up, however in one book it was mentioned several times that the ship was under constant acceleration and then a character hacks the ships control system and turns off the artificial gravity and people and things start floating around. The laws of physics still apply in the made up future, you can't be under acceleration AND have zero gravity.

He could jangle a good tune on the piano too.... 😂

Even more so in Wales as there are no grammar schools, and very very few private schools. Local comp is literally the only option in some private schools.

I do think it makes our experience of 'class' very different to that of lots of english people, it was only when I went to uni that I realised it was still a 'thing' for lots of people - growing up yes some people's parents had more money and others less but I was never aware of all the various class signifiers until then.

"I do think it makes our experience of 'class' very different to that of lots of english people, it was only when I went to uni that I realised it was still a 'thing' for lots of people - growing up yes some people's parents had more money and others less but I was never aware of all the various class signifiers until then."

Yes, same here to some extent, but I think that for people who are struggling in Wales, they are very aware of class from a young age.

The school situation in Cardiff is complex though. There are private schools in the area, including Atlantic College that attracts foreign Royalty, and huge differences between the comprehensives in different parts of the city.

I’ve got a strong feeling that in those days, money could get you into Oxford just as well as brains!

And Bertie was a Rackets Blue so maybe sporting talent came into it too.

"It's all right for the men's colleges to have hearty passmen who gambol round and learn to play games, so that they can gambol and game in Prep. Schools. "

Viscount Saint George had money. He may have had brains, but didn't trouble to use them. And there were idiots like Reggie Pomfret.

I'm more surprised that Bertie ever exerted himself physically than mentally, tbh.

@HilaryThorpe The piano's OK, but don't mention the banjolele within earshot of Jeeves.

Re use of the word 'trash' This is the second verse of 'Fine Knacks for Ladies' which was set to music by John Dowland, the English composer - born 1563)

Though all my wares be trash
The heart is true, the heart is true
Though all my wares be trash
The heart is true, the heart is true

Actually you do get private wings in NHS hospitals, the Wales children were all born in a private wing of an NHS hospital as was their father and uncle Harry.

I've worked in an NHS hospital with a private wing.
https://www.ouh.nhs.uk/privatehealthcare/
https://www.imperial.nhs.uk/private-care/our-facilities/lindo-wing
https://www.royalwolverhampton.nhs.uk/visiting-us/private-patients.html

Not all private hospitals have an ICU, some don't even have Drs overnight.

I spent a year working in the operating theatre of the Manchester Royal Infirmary’s Private Patients unit - though admittedly this was back in the early 90s.

Yes, I live in Cardiff and agree it's very different to e.g. rural powys where there might be one comp covering a huge radius. I also think welsh language schools are used by some parents in some places as a type of social filtering - because children of immigrants or from socially deprived english speaking backgrounds are far less likely to send their chidren there. Again this is in more town/city areas where welsh isn't the main first language.

The previous poster is specifically referring to an ICU wing though, not just a general/maternity private wing, like the Lindo or St Mary's where the royal children were born.

None of the links you've quoted refer to private ICUs, they're referring to either paying privately for specialist referrals, or for paying for a private room within a general hospital, not emergency treatment.

Anything that's not the local school can be used that way.

Rupert Campbell Black is described as being 60 in the present day

ISTR that despite the long gap in publishing, the football book (whose name I've already forgotten, that's how bad I thought it was) comes chronologically immediately after Mount, so that's probably 4 or 5 years off the age you thought he should be. I think she said in the acknowledgements that she didn't want to write about the pandemic.

Here's a recent one from me. I like the "Detective's Daughter" series by Lesley Thomson, but in the last one, someone makes quite a point of mentioning that a little girl called Milly is officially Amelia. She isn't - she's Emily, specifically named after a particular Emily who played a part in one of the previous stories.

There's also a thriller by Dick Francis (the one where they're making a film) in which someone phones Directory Enquiries for a mobile number - and gets it.

I read the most ridiculous book the other week.

It involved a car accident, driving back from France.

When she woke up, thinking she was in France still, it was explained that the accident happened after they’d ‘crossed over’ on the expressway.

You know, that famous land border between France and England.

I’ve never been so annoyed reading a book 😂

Just read a thriller in which, in a flashback, the teenage daughter was going to school in London on 12 August. Not only that it was in 2021 with no mention of Covid issues of any kind.

Not books, but radio.
I've just finished listening to the latest series of "Lifelines" on Radio 4. If you don't know it, it set in an ambulance despatch centre. The drama is around the calls that come in.

One episode included an incident that involved a teacher, calls to school, dialogue with school staff, reference to being in a lesson etc. It was set August (this was confirmed in the story "why was he wearing that in August!?") and in England (call handler confirmed Exeter address).

Except schools in England are not open in August.

There's also a thriller by Dick Francis (the one where they're making a film) in which someone phones Directory Enquiries for a mobile number - and gets it.

In the early days of mobile phones you could register your number with Directory Enquiries.

A book set in the States where teenagers in hospital bond over the love of a police procedural set in Glasgow. So far so good, but the TV characters are referred to as ‘agent [name]’. Just - no.

The same author had an English girl going to boarding school in the States because she had Asperger’s and her parents didn’t want her to end up in a secure institution in the UK. She also received a car for her 16th birthday (in England) and had never heard of Scooby Doo because some network didn’t start airing over here until a particular date (if the character hadn’t heard of it I could understand, but it was written as if no British person would have come across the show). I had been enjoying the book until the character turned up!

@Latenightreader similarly I was quite enjoying How to Solve Your Own Murder - set in England, based on English characters, but written by an American - until the police became involved and a 'Detective Crane' enters the story. Not DI or DCI but always 'Detective Crane'. Just noooo, and very annoying. Also (and at the risk of sounding a bit Hot Fuzz here) the storyline shows a complete lack of regard for police procedure and paperwork

You can actually drive from the age of 16 in England if you receive higher rate mobility allowance, but I don't think ASD/ Aspergers would qualify you for that! (I only know this as I know someone with cystic fibrosis who was driving from 16, I don't think it's that common to do...!)

Thank you, I was sure I remembered that you could add your mobile - and of course your fax! - to your listing.

Kristin Perrin (author of How to Solve Your Own Murder) is British, not American- or at the very least, she lives in the UK (Hampton Court, in fact) and has done for years. Her son is in my nephew's class! So there's definitely no excuse for 'Detective Crane'!

Another one I have to get off my chest... in The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, two characters are described as 'semi-identical twins'. That is not a thing. Twins are either identical or they are not, and these two definitely were not, as they were opposite-sex twins. Despite this, later on in the book, the twins are described as having the same DNA.

I cannot believe both the author and the editor can be so ignorant of very basic science!

Brookmyre is married to a medic/pathologist IIRC!!

Edit: an anaesthetist