A little knowledge
I just finished a rather good police procedural called Ice Blue. At one point, the police discover that the murdered man's daughter was actually not his. Unfortunately, the author messed it up.
The family was giving blood, and the suspect spotted how the nurse reacted when Julie, the daughter, said "Dad." The suspect casually looked at the labels on the bags and saw that the man and his wife were both Type O. The daughter couldn't have been theirs.
The problem? The daughter was AB.
Yeah.
Several people said that she was "undeniably" the wife's. But she couldn't have been. Two Type Os can only have O children. The real father was AB - but he and the woman couldn't have had an AB child. Julie needed to be A or B.
Sure, it's very minor. But it jarred. A little knowledge is often not enough.
Labels: entertainment, science, writing
2 Comments:
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At 1:04 PM, September 04, 2011
Kathie had this to say...
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At 4:58 PM, September 04, 2011
Brigid Daull Brockway had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Don't publishers employ copy editors and fact checkers any more? Grrr...
Things like that drive me bananas; I don't have a whole lot of medical knowledge, but yeah. It only takes a tiny bit of homework to avoid mistakes like that, and when your entire plot hinges on such a detail, you'd want to really try and get it right.
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