Anyhow, I just discovered a mistake at the beginning of Chapter 4. Somehow, it is comforting to know that also the famous authors, despite all their experience and the resources of their publishers, make mistakes.
Here is the opening of Chapter 4.
Right inside the shell of the second-floor room, a second shell was taking shape. It was being built from brand-new softwood two-by-fours, nailed together in the conventional way, looking like a new room growing right there inside the old room. But the new room was going to be about a foot smaller in every dimension than the old room had been. A foot shorter in length, a foot narrower in width, and a foot shorter in height.
The new floor joists were going to be raised a foot off the old joists with twelve-inch lengths of the new softwood. The new lengths looked like a forest of short stilts, ready to hold the new floor up. More short lengths were ready to hold the new framing a foot away from the old framing all the way around the sides and the ends.
Well? Have you noticed anything? I did, as soon as I read the two paragraphs. Come on... Isn’t it obvious? OK, I’ll tell you, as you know I would!
The first paragraph states that a the new room being built inside another room is A foot shorter in length, a foot narrower in width, and a foot shorter in height. Then, supposing that you place the new, smaller, room in the centre of the old one, how much space do you have left around? I should say, half a foot. Right?
And yet, Lee Child’s second paragraph states that the new framing is a foot away from the old framing all the way around the sides and the ends.
It gives an all new dimension to carpentry, doesn’t it?
In the past, I reported such errors, at least the most blatant ones, to the publisher. But I have never received a reply. Their loss, I should say.
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