<<To my ear, this sentence--"The bulls drove me
out to the West Hollywood division and threw me in the
drunk
tank"--sounds as authentic as this sentence--"The bulls drove
me out to
the West Hollywood precinct and threw me in the drunk
tank.">>
But what would you say if in LA everybody called the drunk
tank, say,
"the tub" - and you knew it? And if nobody spoke of "the
bulls" anymore?
I agree that some details are inoffensive, but a series of
them can be
bothersome to a reader who knows the territory. In the Luis
Mendoza
procedural by Dell Shannon that started this authenticity
thread, I was
not bothered by Dell Shannon's errors since she conveys a
real sense of
a city I know very well. Of course, now that certain things
have been
noticed, I will inevitably be looking for them in my next
Dell Shannon!
Speaking not of authenticity but of its cousin, plausibility:
what do
our fellow raravians think of Michael Connelly's "The Poet",
in which a
journalist is allowed to be part of a federal team that is
after a
serial killer? I found this central premise of the book
rather
unbelievable, and it marred the book somewhat for me
(however, given
Connelly's gift for creating suspense, I still wasn't able to
put it
down...).
Regards,
MT
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