Category Archives: Civil War

So I’m reading this detective novel, published in Great Britain, and enjoying it, despite the many typos. The proofreader must have been drunk. Then, in a little history sequence, a character pronounces the Texas Brigade a cavalry outfit. Not hardly. Straight-leg infantry, entirely. Then April 21 is named as Texas Independence Day. Uh, uh. It’s March 2. Finally, in a little ghost scene, the main character is in a dream fight with Rebel soldiers and he smells cordite. No, he doesn’t. Cordite, or smokeless powder, wasn’t even invented until a decade or more after the war. Sloppy. Really sloppy. Authors need to do their homework. Otherwise their carefully contrived illusion falls apart. Same with the typos. You stumble over them, slowing down in puzzlement. I’ll finish the book, but not with the same enthusiasm I began it. Just hope the mistakes don’t continue. But I have to expect they will.

UPDATE: The typos did, over and over. But the book, "In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead," was a good one nevertheless. As for the mistakes, I found an interview with the author, Houstonian James Lee Burke, in which he admitted: "I’ve never researched anything, and it probably shows. [Laughs]." Or paid attention in Texas history class. For all that, I decided to try another, "The Neon Rain."