Just about everybody needs convincing characters. Much of the
recent
discussion about Willeford's merit revolved around how
believable, how
real his characters were. All readers know people, so they
have
knowledge of this area and can judge it against their own
experience.
As the book enters other areas other questions are raised.
For
instance, setting, I get a kick out of George Pelecanos
because I know
the DC and suburbs of which he writes, I have driven down
most of these
streets, know the landmarks, hell, had my radio stolen out of
my car
tonight just around the corner from where a liquor store
robbery in
Shoedog took place. But someone who doesn't know DC would go
by how
real it seems, just as I do for authors writing about cities
with which
I am unfamiliar.
The same can be said of professional behavior and/or
procedure. As I
have said before, I have very little first or even second
hand
experience of the true world of cops and robbers (even those
few times I
have been robbed, I was absent at the time, thank God),
therefore I look
only for internal consistency. Someone with a working
knowledge of the
job would have too much trouble seeing past glaring errors to
even
consider the story on its own terms. My brother, an
ex-Marine, has this
trouble with military movies, the simple mistakes (ones I, an
outsider,
don't notice) make him lose all faith in the artist, killing
his trust
in the artwork; if s/he can't get the little things right,
why should my
brother trust her/him on the big things?.
So it all comes down to how much you trust the artist and a
knowledgable
reader has one more area for potential betrayal.
Mark
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