Bad Country by CB Mckenzie.

[SheilaT]

I've just started reading it, only 11 pages in, and I'm not sure I want to continue.

First of all, there's mysterious prologue, and I'm not terribly fond of them, but they're so common anymore there's no point in complaining.

The novel is set in southern Arizona. There's a fictitious county, named Los Jarros. Why would a writer feel the need to make up a fictitious county, rather than setting the it firmly in either Pima or Santa Cruz county? I don't take kindly to made-up stuff like that. And then "Mexican" screen doors keep on being mentioned. I cannot picture what he means. I've lived in Arizona two different times in my life, and I'm now in New Mexico. Haven't really run into that reference before.

A page or two later the main character pulls out a wallet. "There was not much fungible in the wallet." Huh? I think he means there was very little money in it. The meaning of fungible makes no sense in this context.

In a list of yellow pages the character has his phone number listed -- he's a Private Eye -- one city is Los Cruces. No. It's Las Cruces. There is absolutely no excuse for that misspelling.

So now I'm trying to figure out if I should bother to keep reading. All of these little things completely destroy my faith in anything the author says. This is a novel that has been widely praised, and even won the Tony Hillerman Prize. Apparently these sorts of wrong things don't matter much t a prize committee.

Or am I being far too picky, and a fake county, weirdly misused vocabulary, and misspelled city names not at all important?

[TexasProgresive]

1. I know exactly what you mean.

Good fiction writers do a lot of research about the setting of their novels. They probably put as much time into that as the writing. The book I recently read, Midnight Crossroad nearly turned me of because of the character names were so foreign to Texas except Chuy and Joe. But I persevered and all those strange named people were strange. The description of this north central Texas town was real enough and the story was fun. So I'm glad I continued to read.

Sometime back I read a mystery that was set in Ireland. The author made many errors and the most glaring was the protagonist having to watch her step for fear of snakes. Ireland doesn't have any snakes except perhaps in zoos- never had any-St. Patrick notwithstanding. I thought that I might do a complete rewrite of her book as an exercise in writing fiction but never did.

edited to add: I've never heard of "Mexican screen doors" either. We don't have them in Texas unless you count the screen doors owned by Mexican people living in Texas.

[scarletwoman]

2. First, I must thank you for bringing up this book.

I've added it to my "Want to Read" list on GoodReads.com.

As for fictitious place names, it's an extremely common practice in crime fiction. I think this may be for a number of reasons: First, it avoids giving a "bad name" to a real life town/village/county. Second, it forestalls anyone from claiming that one or more fictitious characters is based on someone in real life. Third, it avoids the problem of anyone attempting to connect the crime or crimes in the novel to any real life event.

Anyway, I've never had a problem with it - it's a recurring feature of a great many of the Nordic/Scottish/British/Minnesotan/Alaskan/Canadian crime novels I've been reading for years. E.g. - I love the Louise Penny Inspector Gamach books, no matter that there is no such village in rural Quebec as "Three Pines".

As for the "Los Cruces"/"Las Cruces" error - I would chalk that up to sloppy editing. One thing I've noticed over the years is that publishers have cut way back on their editing staff. It's infuriating for sure, but it's much the same throughout all print media. Welcome to the New World Order of Toxic Capitalism. I think we're lucky that books are still being published at all, considering how few people even read books anymore. Not exactly a high profit enterprise these days.

I'm generally forgiving of small annoyances in a novel if the overall story grabs me. As long as a book can carry me off into a new place in my imagination I'm happy. Yeah, I'm easy...

[SheilaT]

3. Thanks for the responses.

I've read a few more pages, and I'm going to go to at least fifty before I give up. Maybe if there are no more errors it will be worth it.

One of my faults is that I can be a real stickler for details. If I know something, and a writer or the movie has gotten it wrong, I get very annoyed.

I do sort of understand about fictionalizing a location, but instead of having a completely fictional county in Arizona, he could have just more vaguely said Southern Arizona. Tucson has already been referenced, and I wouldn't be surprised if my character goes there.

Oh, well. To give you an idea of my pickiness: recently I was a beta reader for a writer friend's novela. He has his characters driving from Kansas City to the Denver airport. When the set out on the second or so day from Hays, Kansas, the expectation clearly stated is that they'll get to the airport inside a few hours, do what they've come to do, and be back in Hays by nightfall. Oh, and they're driving a humvee sort of vehicle across the land, avoiding the interstate. And they have a couple of scouts on horseback, going ahead of them. I did let the writer know (who lives in the Denver area, by the way) that I've driven between KC and Denver plenty of times, and even at highway speeds on the interstate, it's at least six hours from Hays to Denver. He's also a pretty good friend of mine, and I'll be interested to see if he fixes that part of it.

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. I loved this book.

I thought the characters were interesting and the plot kept me hooked. I didn't pay too much attention to those errors. Sometimes the little things can bother me too but not this time. It is a debut novel so hopefully there will be less problems in the future if more are coming. In addition, what are editors, proofreaders, and such for? They missed the boat too.

It was a tough story with no holes barred.

[SheilaT]

5. Perhaps if I didn't live so close to the action of the book

I would be less bothered. It's because I know perfectly well there isn't such a county as the one named, and I live in the state with the misspelled city, that it makes me so crazy. Plus, there are two pages at the end thanking all those who helped him out. Did no one out of all of those notice he spelled Las Cruces wrong?

And in the part of the novel I've read so far, and again in the acknowledgements, he has "Tuxson" instead of Tucson. I'm guessing when he was learning to read and write they system he used encouraged "invented spelling" (one of my sons went through that) and all too often the system never gets around to getting the kid to adapt to correct spelling. But surely, surely, some one of the many people who looked at the manuscript could have fixed those things. Although, the city of Tucson is not pronounced the way it would be if spelled with an x instead of a c in the middle.

Of course, when a major network misspells the name of my fair city (Sante Fe for Santa Fe) as happened on a recent episode of The Bachelor, I suppose these errors in a novel should be overlooked.

Oh, and is there any chance you mean "It was a tough story with no holds barred"?

[Are_grits_groceries]

6. Yes, I meant holds. Nt

[Enthusiast]

7. Thank you for the interesting discussion.