The devil resides in the details. We've all heard this old saying. What people seldom or ever hear is that the angels also reside there as well. The things that make or break the authenticity of a story are, to me, the little things. If you're writing a story set in Victorian England, it goes without saying that you ought to know who the Queen of England was in that time period. (Hint, she's not buried in Grant's Tomb). And of course you would know this. You'd probably also know that they didn't have airplanes or cars, that men wore hats, and that people used the English language a bit more eloquently. ("It is a matter of the utmost moment," say, instead of, "Dude, it's really fuckin' important!") Well and good. But to me, it's not the obvious things that sell what our 7th grade English teachers told us was "verisimilitude" to the audience. They themselves don't create the atmosphere. It's the tiny stuff.
If I'm writing a Victorian mystery (or romance, or thriller -- whatever), my characters are going to be going through everyday life. And what is everyday life? A series of mundanities and details. But because everyday life in 1889 is totally alien to us -- the moreso because it is also not alien, but familiar -- these mundanities are interesting. Indeed, they are a selling-point in themselves. What was the plumbing like? What kinds of toothpaste were available? How much did breakfast cost? A cigar? A newspaper? A telegram? A train ticket? How did they keep food cold? How did they stay cool in hot weather? What did people take when they had headaches or earaches? How many pennies to the pound? When did the pubs close? How long did it take for letters to get from London to Paris, or Paris to New York? Et cetera and so on. If you nail this stuff, not only do you help capture the atmosphere of the time, you also convince your audience you know WTF you're talking about.
Howdunnit produced two different reactions in me. The first was relief. As somebody who used to work in law enforcement, I am pretty particular about accuracy, and frequently appalled at the unwillingness by some authors to do more than the most introductory levels of research. To quote one example, I still encounter books, TV shows and movies in which people are shot by "silenced revolvers." (You cannot, for the record, silence a freaking revolver!). I realize that research is not everybody's cup of tea, but I think if you choose to write outside your own zone of knowledge, you are obligated to do your homework. You could fill volumes with what I don't know, but if I don't know it, I want to consult somebody who does. So I was happy to remember that resources like this do exist.
My second reaction was that a book like this is more valuable, in my opinion, for the little details than for the big ones. Somebody pointed out that roll call is a basic part of the policeman's day, and yet how many cop dramas ever show it? Hill Street Blues, sure, but that's one of the very few. In books I can't recall ever reading about a roll call scene, or at any rate can't recall it easily. It's one of those "mundane" details that's actually quite interesting to the reader. When Boertlein talks about unforms in the Street Cops section, for example, it reminded me of the bitter feud in the NYPD between the PBA and the Commissioner's Office about wearing hats. For most of the NYPD's history uniformed officers were required to put on their caps before they exited their vehicles, even in emergency situations. Anyone who failed to wear their cap was disciplined. You saved the baby from the burning building? Great. But you left your cap in your car. Hmmm, not so good. This is just the sort of detail that most writers miss, because they've only looked at the surface of the job. Books like Howdunit help break through that surface and get to all those lovely, "verisimilitudinal" details.
However, I still feel that the best way to get at the nuts and bolts of some closed-off, alien profession -- soldiering, policework, corrections, medicine, spycraft, etc, etc. -- is to read memiors. A good memior to me is worth ten times its weight in outside research, because it's here you get those wonderful asides -- for example, the fact that soldiers in WWII often unrolled condoms over the muzzles of their rifles to keep them from collecting moisture, or that ballplayers on a hot streak seldom wash their uniforms but go out in the same hideously sweaty and smelly rig day after day until the streak breaks, or that Mafia goons never take public transportation.
I guess I've beaten this to death, but to me, the best way to keep the reader in the moment is to convince him/her that you know your stuff absolutely cold. There was never a moment in Red Dragon (or for that matter, his Black Sunday or Silence of the Lambs) that I felt Harris wasn't speaking from either personal experience or the sort of meticulous research you'd normally associate with a scientific investigation. That allowed me to ease back, and enjoy the ride. It's a good moral for all of us.
Gill Man
