Authors' Mistakes #7 - Lee Child (again)

Lee Child definitely knows how to write thrilling crime novels. The Visitor, published in the US with the title Running Blind, is a good read, all 500 pages of it.

I’m amazed that, despite Child’s experience and Bantam’s professional editing, a mistake still found its way into the published book. I already reported on this blog a mistake I found in another Lee Child’s book: Die Trying.

What follow is a paragraph in Chapter 22, on page 352 of my paperback edition of The Visitor:

The apartment they wanted was on the eighth floor. Reacher touched the elevator button and the door rolled back. The car was lined with bronze mirror on all four sides. Harper stepped in and Reacher crowded after her. Pressed eight. An infinite number of reflections rode up with them.

Do you see it?

It’s easy enough: When the door opens, it slides away (incidentally, rolled is not the verb I would have used, but then, who am I to criticise?)  Then, how can Reacher see that the interior of the door is lined with a mirror? He is even still standing outside the lift. Child should have swapped the sentence “The car was lined...” with “Harper stepped in...” In fact, Reacher could have only seen the inside of the door after the door closed.