Re: RARA-AVIS: Realism and Reality

James Rogers (jetan@ionet.net)
Mon, 10 Aug 1998 23:00:50 -0500 (CDT) At 11:42 PM 8/10/98 -0400, Mark wrote:
>
>That said, however, I must say I am annoyed by errors that I do
>recognize as such. Not being in the law trade (neither enforcement nor
>breaking), my first hand knowledge is minimal, so this doesn't happen a
>lot. And now that I think about it, with the exception of a couple of
>books like Dave Simon's great Homicide, I'm really mostly checking
>fictional reality against other fictional realities. So I wonder how
>many times I have taken something factual to be a mistake simply because
>it does not jibe with the way the element is usually wrongly handled in
>the mysteries I read.
>
>>

It bugs me a little in cop books when obvious details are off. I
guess the classic case is the writer who has his detective, lacking a body,
say that no prosecution is possible absent a "corpus delicti". Gag. Lots
more when I read a courtroom scene that could not happen. I feel that
inadequate research betrays a certain contempt for the reader.
As far as accuracy in the legal trade goes, I would single out
Thompson's _Nothing More Than Murder_ as extraordinary (only murder story I
know of that is based on a point in Antitrust law) and Cain's _Double
Indemnity_.
If Dick Treat were still here I would ask him for some bad examples
of phoniness in the medical arena

James
James Michael Rogers
jetan@ionet.net

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