DAVID BARRIE
Tuesday, 27th April 2010. On getting the facts wrong.
Occasionally I bump into people who have read Wasp-Waisted (which is quite a feat, given that the initial print run is far from sold-out – assuming that my royalty statements from John Law Media are to be believed). And occasionally one of these hardy readers will point out a mistake in the first edition (for instance, the entry on Balzac in the glossary is not justified with the right-hand side of the page, whereas all the others are), or object to my propensity to over-hyphenate (then again, what can you expect from someone who gives all his books hyphenated titles?).
However, it seems that no one has as yet spotted the most glaring mistake in the current version of Wasp-Waisted, so I will point it out myself in the hope of thereby saving some face. Fortunately, it is of no importance as far as the plot or its myriad characters are concerned, but it is very embarrassing for someone hoping to win his spurs in the field of crime fiction. I discovered its presence when reading the user manual for the Manurhin police revolver while writing Night-Scented (since there was a fair bit about handgun and rifle technology in the latter, I did my homework), but I ought to have spotted it before, as it was glaringly obvious, and I’ve seen enough Westerns in my time to know better.
Franck Guerin carries an MR73 revolver. On p.148 of Wasp-Waisted the following happens: “he extracted the magazine from his revolver and pushed it down inside one of his shoes”. Revolvers don’t have magazines – they have, as their name indicates, a revolving middle-section which normally holds 6 cartridges. Mea culpa. Apologies to the arms buffs. I’ll correct it in the next edition. Promise.
Occasionally I bump into people who have read Wasp-Waisted (which is quite a feat, given that the initial print run is far from sold-out – assuming that my royalty statements from John Law Media are to be believed). And occasionally one of these hardy readers will point out a mistake in the first edition (for instance, the entry on Balzac in the glossary is not justified with the right-hand side of the page, whereas all the others are), or object to my propensity to over-hyphenate (then again, what can you expect from someone who gives all his books hyphenated titles?).
However, it seems that no one has as yet spotted the most glaring mistake in the current version of Wasp-Waisted, so I will point it out myself in the hope of thereby saving some face. Fortunately, it is of no importance as far as the plot or its myriad characters are concerned, but it is very embarrassing for someone hoping to win his spurs in the field of crime fiction. I discovered its presence when reading the user manual for the Manurhin police revolver while writing Night-Scented (since there was a fair bit about handgun and rifle technology in the latter, I did my homework), but I ought to have spotted it before, as it was glaringly obvious, and I’ve seen enough Westerns in my time to know better.
Franck Guerin carries an MR73 revolver. On p.148 of Wasp-Waisted the following happens: “he extracted the magazine from his revolver and pushed it down inside one of his shoes”. Revolvers don’t have magazines – they have, as their name indicates, a revolving middle-section which normally holds 6 cartridges. Mea culpa. Apologies to the arms buffs. I’ll correct it in the next edition. Promise.