At Least Get The Friggin' Facts Straight...

Okay, this is my first post in a while, and I hate to start the week off by ranting, but it's my bloggie and I'll rant when I want to...rant when I want to...rant when I want to...you would rant too if it happened to you :-(

One of my pet peeves when reading a novel is when the author gets some obvious facts about a person, place or whatever just plain wrong. Yes, I know it's a novel and it's not true, and so on and so forth...but, it really ticks me off when an author gets something so wrong which could have been prevented with just a few minutes of research. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy!!!

Okay, here's an example: "The cab turned west on Madison Avenue and raced towards Little Italy." Now, you don't have to be a New Yawka to know that 'avenues' in Manhattan run north and south and 'streets' run east and west, and if you're writing about a place at least look it up on a friggin' map. If you're a best selling author, such a faux pas is friggin' inexcusable in my opinion.

So, last week I'm reading the latest, Cross, from one of my very favorite authors, James Patterson. Now, the book was just fine overall...one of his typically great stories that makes you want to read the whole thing in one sitting. He describes a scene in which a mob character sneaks away from his home in Brooklyn and holes up in his waterfront compound in Mineola, New York...which is on Long Island. Actually, Brooklyn is on Long Island as well, though there are still (many) people there who will argue to the death that it's not...but that's another story. Anyway, here's the thing...I grew up a few miles from Mineola and haven't been to Mineola in 20 years, but I can tell you that there's no body of water anywhere within miles of Mineola, which is the county seat of Nassau County...except for maybe a drainage ditch or two and and a handful of backyard pools. I love Patterson's books, but you'd think a guy who pulls down tens of millions of green a year can get a fact like that straight. There are also a few minor f-ups about locations and stuff in the DC area where I now live, but that one really drives me f---ing nuts. To make it worse, the book credits thank a team of researchers.

Ahh...I feel so much better now. Ranting can be good for one's health.

Badaboom badabing...