Ever find gun mistakes in books?

[SundownRider]

I was reading a book recently where the author described a double barreled shotgun in "30 odd 6" caliber. I let that one go, but drew the line when he talked about someone "slapping a new magazine in the .38" and it was a revolver.
Part of me wonders if it was intentional to keep nuts like me reading more closely.

 

[ThrottleJockey]

Sounds like most of the stories in the newspaper and on the tv news

 

[Tommygunn]

There have been numerous posts in various websights about mistakes in books.
One I recall was an old western I read about 10 years ago. Don't recall the title. The story took place in the 1870s and the author had someone armed with a .30-30.
The .30-30 wasn't developed until two decades after the time of the story!!!!
Annoyed, I took a pen, and crossed out the .30-30 reference and wrote in ".44-40." Okay, that was cheap, but it made me feel a bit better.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

Stephen King needs a gun editor. He keeps coyly suggesting that his continuity errors are really intentional, but except for in The Colorado Kid, they aren't. In "The Tommyknockers," for example, a character "racks the slide" (and "takes off the safety") of a revolver. Now, if it were a Webley-Fosbury or a Mateba, I think he would have told us.

 

[chris in va]

No, every book I've ever read was extremely accurate.

Seriously, I read a Stephen King book that had a safety on his revolver, that gets "flicked off".

EDIT: And I see DoD has already pointed that one out.

 

[Judicator]

I've found one author so far that takes a great deal of pride in technical accuracy(pardon the pun) when it comes to guns. His name is Stephen Hunter. Books like Pale Horse Coming, Hot Springs, and of course, Point of Impact(which was adapted into the movie Shooter).

Check him out. Great stories.

 

[Dr. Fresh]

Cormac McCarthy usually does a great job.

 

[Tom S.]

Also in King's "The Stand", a character has a .38 Colt Woodsman. He has a lot of non-gun mistakes too in his books, which makes me wonder if he does it on purpose to see if people notice.

 

[BCCL]

Safeties on revolvers and suppressors on revolvers drive me nuts.

I have a friend that is an aspiring writer and doesn't know a lot about guns, and he faithfully runs all of his gun stuff past me by email to proofread and correct it before submitting it for publication.

He's just got his first story published in a local University review!

 

[statelineblues]

Hate Stephen King - can't stand any of his books...

One of the best authors is Laurell K. Hamilton - writes a couple vampire series.
She actually goes out and test fires all the guns her characters use (she's friends with a local LEO instructor).

 

[Duke of Doubt]

Tom S.: "Also in King's "The Stand", a character has a .38 Colt Woodsman. He has a lot of non-gun mistakes too in his books, which makes me wonder if he does it on purpose to see if people notice."

He apologized to readers for some errors included in "The Green Mile" relating to radio shows which did not exist at the time of events in the book. He claimed that errors in "The Colorado Kid" (a GREAT book; King's only recent good one) relating to Starbucks and Blockbuster existing in 1980 may not have been unintentional. THIS one I actually believe, as "solving" the Colorado Kid mystery (or, arriving at the most entertaining "solution") depends precisely on discovering these two "errors" (more precisely, mistakes committed by the narrator, Vince Teague, telling that part of the story, which amounts to a deathbed confession -- he died six months after the story was related to the young reporter). King never acknowledged all the gun errors throughout his writings. Or a bunch of other errors. Long ago he stopped having his books edited, and it shows.

 

[waterhouse]

These happen all the time.

Alex Cross in the James Patterson books is constantly flicking off the safety on his Glock. I've read online where people wrote letters to the author to point this mistake out, and where they received responses thanking them, but it still happens in almost every one of the books in the series.

In one of Lee Child's Reacher novels the main character is using an HK P7M10. This is interesting as it is a fairly obscure weapon, something that the author probably had to read something about before he decided to use it in his novel, but he still butchered the facts.

It doesn't bother me so much when the author doesn't go into the details, but when they start talking about minute details of the guns and get them wrong it seems like they should have just left the details out.

I often wonder if people in other hobbies/disciplines (pilots, computer programmers, car fanatics, etc.) find glaring mistakes when they are reading that I can happily gloss over because I'm not as informed as they are.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

waterhouse: "I often wonder if people in other hobbies/disciplines (pilots, computer programmers, car fanatics, etc.) find glaring mistakes when they are reading that I can happily gloss over because I'm not as informed as they are."

We certainly do. But unlike most gun enthusiasts, those of other hobbies also are overjoyed when the author actaully manages to get it right. Example: John Varley's 1985 novel "Millenium" (based on his earlier short story "Air Raid," later made into an awful Kris Kristofferson/Cheryl Ladd movie) gets air traffic control and air disaster investigation very realistic, at least circa 1985. Clearly Varley spent time researching at a TRACON and at NTSB.

 

[Duke of Doubt]

I have to point out one more gun error, as it appears in my favorite novel and one otherwise excellently researched -- Mark Helprin's "A Soldier of the Great War." In a scene on the Isonzo Front, one of the Italian soldiers laments that each of his men have only a single five-round clip. WWI Italian Carcanos loaded six 6.5mm rounds in a Mannlicher clip, which could not be loaded with fewer. Conceivably the soldiers in question were using captured Mausers, as the protagonist does in a later scene in an Alpine mountain gun observation post.

 

[NoirFan]

I can usually spot gun errors in books, but they are easy to overlook if the error serves a storytelling purpose. A common example is "flicking off the safety" on guns with no safety in real life, but I don't mind if the author uses it well in a dramatic situation.

Generally in a work of fiction I find that the less written about gun specifics the better. Just tell me what I need to know about the weapon and get on with the story. Raymond Chandler definitely knew his guns, but he kept his descriptions succinct and punchy: "short barreled police .38", "double-action hammerless revolver", ".32 automatic loaded with flat-point ammunition", etc.

My all time favorite Chandler-gun-moment is when he describes a corrupt detective pulling out a ".38 on a .44 frame, a wicked weapon with the punch of a .45 but twice the range." (not exact quote) It gives you just enough description to see it in your mind's eye, tells a small story about the user, and moves on without slowing the action.

 

[SoCalShooter]

yes I especially found them in MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL

 

[Hatchett]

On Marlowe,

In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe also equips a very specific, and quite esoteric, "Colt .38 automatic of the type known as Super Match" that he keeps in a drawer.

 

[Diamondback6]

I often wonder if people in other hobbies/disciplines (pilots, computer programmers, car fanatics, etc.) find glaring mistakes when they are reading that I can happily gloss over because I'm not as informed as they are.

Bet on it--I know a lot of us wingnuts (plane-junkies) are just as bad as, if not worse than, anything I've seen around the gunboards...

 

[Big Bill]

I did a book edit once for a guy that was writing a western and it began in the early 1840s with the hero as a 15 year-old shooting a single shot .22.

There were so many gun related mistakes in the book and others throughout that when I was done I felt like I had written the damned thing myself.

 

[Deanimator]

It's more often I find mistakes than accurate portrayals, sometimes assinine mistakes. Actually, a couple of weeks ago, I heard one in the commercial for a book. It's about some Sam Spade type in Cleveland immediately after WWII. He talks about a .44 Magnum, a gun that wouldn't see the light of day for a good ten years.

 

[Tinpig]

Something that bugs me is when "ordnance" is referred to as "ordinance."

Seen it on a few Gun Boards, too.

Tinpig

 

[Meowhead]

Stephen King is the only one I know of that actually wrote about a pump-action side-by-side shotgun.

(I just know somebody's going to reply to this by posting link to that thread with two Remington 870s bolted together)

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

Mistakes are easier to overlook when they are only incidental and not a point on which a plot turns.

 

[Diamondback6]

@Meowhead: What, you've never heard of Deer Hunter and his 1740? lol

 

[akodo]

that last one about 44 magnum reminds me of how often in Son of Sam movies and TV shows the character is using a 44 magnum, which is the only type of 44 caliber the writers apparently understand, when the 5 shot snubnose charter arms bulldog in 44 special was the real 44 caliber weapon used