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 once tried to read Patriot Games by Tom Clancy.

The hospital in London made a patient stay in a wheelchair until they left the building the same as the rule in the US. I've never been made to use a wheelchair leaving hospital.

The daughter stays with the late Queen and Prince Philip where they have dinner with her every evening.

The main villain is moved to the Isle of Wight on Christmas day. This is the 1980s, I'm not sure a ferry would be operating then but I am sure they did not drive past numerous bakeries open with people queuing to buy bread.

I think that's the point I stopped reading.

More recently a book where a child was kidnapped. The book starts some years later when the child returns home.

Mum comes in to the kitchen sees him sitting there and then says she has to pick up another child from a friend's so get in the car.

No questions.
No calling of the police.
No calling the friend's parents to ask if th4ey can drop him off or keep him a few hours while she calls the police.

It's convention to write one-digit numbers in words and two-digit numbers in numerals.

Sure - that’s why I’ll forgive some mistakes (spelling and style)

I don’t think there’s any excuse for glaring errors (like smartphones being an integral part of the plot when it was 20 years ago or the jubilee line example)

while writers don’t get paid very much I don’t read a book to be taken for an idiot

I can relate

Read a book a while ago, also set in London
Except in this book, to fit in the theme of it (Tube attacks) Crystal Palace had an Underground Station!

@Trinity65 Crystal Palace does have an Overground Station though - which some people do include as part of the "Tube" system.

I'm not certain but think in the 70s/early 80s you could turn right there. Maybe only taxis?

Oh Americans writing about London having blocks. Look at a map FFS.

Another one I stopped reading was a dystopian novel where someone gets to Calais, is then taken to Paris (OK plausible) but is then invited for dinner and is driven to Brest and back to Paris to sleep.

The person who we are thinking of would undoubtedly have picked it up if he'd come across it, but I'm not sure if from a sailor of any nationality - wasn't there a belief that if fallen overboard, being able to swim would prolong the inevitable death? As I read, I didn't think about it at first, being occupied with visualising the person of a long ago friend of mine who was a very elegant swimmer. A few pages further on, I had a "what?" moment and recalled my Dad, who competed in the Brighton Boys Brigade team, telling me that he started swimming the Trudgen before being taught the Australian crawl in the late 20s.. (He was elegant with it, too! He was disappointed in me, I can't. Sidestroke with an aerial recovery of the trailing arm is the nearest I get.) I suppose there might have been a Muslim from Indonesia somewhere in the East at someone's court. Or a woman. The article I read on checking up felt that the crawl should be called Samoan, as the Aussies had been doing a bit of cultural whatyoumaycallit. And I have a faint memory that early reaction to the crawl had not been positive among the upper ranks as it was thought barbaric. Typical white male European, the only group to stand out against a better, more efficient, faster way to do something, because, reasons. Or colder water.
It could'nt have been any sort of backstroke, or breaststroke, because of the plot, I forgive Dunnett.
Anyone know what the Romans taught the legionaries? I have often wondered.

Convention is just another word for style.

Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club also seemed fuzzy about the Kent/Sussex boundary. I usually visualise the map of fiction, and where I know the area it's easier. And then I find myself tripping up. I didn't want to reread with the OS open, just pretended it wasn't real.

We had The Burning, by Laura Bates removed from our school library- and then, after a quick email- removed from all the borough libraries. Its portrayal of child protection issues- and how adults deal with them- was so inaccurate we felt it was actively dangerous because it might prevent children coming forward with issues.

The issues it portrays have specific case studies and statutory guidance in the 'Keeping children safe in education' it is compulsory to read if you work in education- so we're not talking minor mistakes here. Yes, that specific guidance was in place when the book was published. Can't believe an author was arrogant enough to write the book without checking what actually happens, but then it went through all the rounds of editing at a major publishing house without anyone checking.

the Richard Osman books are terribly researched. I was willing to suspend disbelief in the way the police officers shared private information with 4 random members of a retirement home, despite the fact that this would at best result in a disciplinary and at worst could end up in them losing their jobs and being imprisoned but none of it made any sense!

The first one has the older woman solving the mystery because she knew a "mortician" who worked in the mortuary attached to the local hospital who owed her a favour so got her CCTV footage of the local cemetery which proved x person visited there at a certain time (nearly a year ago iirc). The problem with this is:
a) morticians aren't based in hospitals, they are usually freelance or attached to funeral homes
b) someone working at the local hospital wouldn't have any access to CCTV in a completely different area of town (usually run by the council but ironically in this case the police could have easily got access if they wanted it)
c) CCTV usually overwrites after a set period, usually no more than a month, often less
d) if you don't know the exact date and time, watching CCTV for a specific person/incident takes forever - even if you watch it at x4 speed the 'mortician' would have had to spend months watching it for 12 hours a day to 'find' that particular person.
e) just handing it over to a random member of the public is completely illegal!

they also found out a car's numberplate 'by using ANPR' - despite the fact the WHOLE POINT of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (clue is in the name!) is you need to know the numberplate first for it to be picked up.

It varies, honestly.

I'm familiar with rather a lot of different publishers' style guides. One of the things that tends to appear in the checklist is 'numbers written out up to 10/up to 100/not when followed by a unit'.

I would accept 2 miles or two miles. It (whispers) doesn't matter.

Not really. Convention is the usual or acceptable way of behaving. It suggests a rule. Style reflects an interest.

In the context of writing 2 or two, I consider convention and style are the same.

HTH.

I love JD Kirk's novels, I often laugh out loud which is rare for me when reading, especially in crime novels!

Could it be something like the Lorna/Lana in ‘Frasier’? Introduced as a high school friend named Lorna Lynley, the producers changed it to Lana to avoid referring to a real Lorna Lynley.

Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club also seemed fuzzy about the Kent/Sussex boundary.

Well in fairness to Richard Osman, it is fuzzy! Bits of Tunbridge Wells, Speldhurst and Lamberhurst were/are in Sussex.

And there's North Woolwich, north of the river, but used to be actually part of Kent, like the rest of Woolwich, until all this modern messing with county boundaries

That's an opinion, not a fact 😊

Which is why I wrote “I consider”

I haven’t read this, but is it possible @Chitterlina that the description of “wife” is through the eyes of another character who assumes they are married? There is a name for that thing where the author writes through the eyes of one character but still in the third person and without necessarily stating expressly that this is what they are doing, I think it is used in Madame Bovary?Might even be a device to underscore how much the partner thinks that being married is how he wants them to be seen?

Style indirect libre! I just remembered the name. Was Fay Weldon a Flaubert fan?

Separately, someone mentioned being annoyed by an American author writing about Cornwall and using American terms like faucet and sidewalk. Surely that’s OK in the narrative, as told by an American, as long as the English characters do not use US terms in direct speech? Otherwise nobody would be able to write a book set outside their own country.

@SheilaFentiman I would love an original edition of GN. I did get a Folio Society edition of Strong Poison for my birthday, which is lovely.

I'm positive 'dump' is original Sayers. And I haven't investigated further, but I'm always surprised at the words we think are Americanisms but were used happily here until they fell out of fashion, but were retained in the US. Bill Bryson's Made in America was very good on this.

PS love your username 😁

Have you forgotten me Lady Peter? Though I was before your time.

Not at all, @HilaryThorpe! I'm hoping you went on to university and other great things after the jewels were recovered 😉