Peter Colt Police Officer  |  Veteran  |  Author

I am militant about research. It sounds funny because I write “tough guy” detective novels, not works of great historic or social importance. Nope, I am a guy trying to entertain his readership. I want you to take my books to the beach or to help you pass a couple-hour layover in a busy airport.

Buying a book, even one from an author you know and like is a leap of faith. We ask you, the reader, to shell out up to $30 and invest a few days of your life in our book, maybe if we’re lucky a series. It usually works out. We use clever turns of phrase; it’s so satisfying to find that sentence that my first reader compliments. We layer and plot and plot twist and hopefully it works out.

Little things can bother a reader. No ballplayer can hit a homerun at every at bat and no writer can make every reader happy. Don’t believe me, go to the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. Getting the occasional negative review is just part of the game.  Not everyone likes what I write, and I am okay with it. I can’t control it and it would be the height of folly to take it personally.

There is something that I can control, that is the details. The pesky little devils that if you get them wrong can take the reader out of the story. When I finished my first book, I gave copies to my family and close friends. My late father-in-law, who was very supportive pointed out that the route my protagonist, Andy Roark drives from Boston to Cape Cod was illogical. He noted that I had Andy driving about fifty miles out of his way because the route he takes isn’t the direct route from Boston to the Cape but instead it was the route that I had driven hundreds of times from Providence, Rhode Island to the Cape.

It was a case of writing what you live, and it was an honest mistake. It also jarred anyone who read the book, who was from Boston and took them out of the story. For my next book, I obsessively haunted locations on Google Maps. I went so far as to Google businesses listed on the maps to see if they would have been there in the 1980’s when my books are set.

For anyone who has ever cringed when reading a book where someone takes the safety off a revolver (most, and almost all modern revolvers don’t have safeties) I spend countless hours each book researching. I look up old restaurants and old menus.  I scour the internet and books so that I can write with authenticity. Each mistake, each gaffe, that jars the reader and takes them out of the story. Too many and then it makes the book itself seem poorly written. Not to mention the financial investment the reader has made. I hate the thought of someone tossing one of my books down in disgust because of something I could have prevented by doing a little extra work.

If I have too many jarring moments in the book, too many mistakes, then they might look at other aspects of the story critically. How am I supposed to pull off a surprise ending or a plot twist believably if I’ve already blown credibility by writing something stupid. Imagine how bad it would look if my guy in 1985 drove north from Boston through a tunnel that didn’t exist then? It might not bother people from other parts of the country but for the Bostonians, I could only be more wrong if I went to Fenway Park wearing a New York Yankees hat.  Nope, not me. I’ll keep paying attention to detail and keep rooting for the home team.