Most of my\nrecreational reading is non-fiction. I\u2019ll make an exception for a handful of\ngun-savvy novelists such as Stephen Hunter. \nI made the mistake at the local library of picking up a novel about an\nindependently wealthy FBI agent who stays in the Presidential Suite at the\nFontainebleu hotel while on official assignment. He carries a Les Baer Custom 1911 pistol,\ngenerally works alone, and is the Bureau\u2019s version of Sherlock Holmes. In this\nparticular book, he is assigned to a partner who carries a Browning\nHi-Power. In the course of a single\nencounter he kills multiple alligators with his pistol, at least one while\nunderwater with it, and while under fire determines \u201cfrom the sound and the\ncharacter of the rifle, that the man was firing a scoped Winchester 94,\n.30-30.\u201d Guy has one hell of an ear,\nhuh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just for the\nrecord, there was a brief window long since closed in which a member of the\nhighest speed, lowest drag FBI special unit might<\/em>\nhave had a Les Baer 1911, and the elite Hostage Rescue Team was once issued\nNovak Custom Browning Hi-Powers, but neither fictional agent was assigned to\nsuch a team in this 2018 novel. The two\nco-writers had obviously done a bit of research, but not enough. And, it should\nbe noted, lone wolf agents don\u2019t fit the FBI protocol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, and by\nthe way, the ultimate bad guy turns out to be a cop. Who is about to kill the\nhero when he himself is hatchet-chopped in the head by a serial killer. Ah, the realism. One gets a sense the authors don\u2019t like cops\nmuch. At the end they comment in narrative,\u201c\u2026the police tended to close ranks\naround their own, even the rotten apples\u2026\u201d \nUh, yeah, sure. That\u2019s why they have internal affairs units, I guess.\nGood Lord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crappy\nresearch does not make good fiction. \nEven when there\u2019s a good plot and solid characters, neither of which I\nsaw in this novel, poor research destroys the \u201cwilling suspension of disbelief\u201d\nrequired for fiction to work well. It\u2019s\nlike seeing an actor in a Robin Hood film with a wrist watch: it kind of blows\nthe whole effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most of my recreational reading is non-fiction. I\u2019ll make an exception for a handful of gun-savvy novelists such as Stephen Hunter. I made the mistake at the local library of picking up a novel about an independently wealthy FBI agent who stays in the Presidential Suite at the Fontainebleu hotel while on official assignment. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5980,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979\/revisions\/5980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}