What is the 'it'?

There comes a point in any self-respecting spy novel, usually about two thirds of the way in, where the story kicks into overdrive. John Le Carre’s books are perhaps an extreme example of this. The painstaking, methodical teasing out of backstory, intrigue, and the setting up of whatever is to be the main action falls away precipitously, and the thing is happening. You suddenly realise that you are right there alongside the good guys (to the extent that the shady operatives of the Circus can be considered “good”) as they embark on whatever insanely dangerous escapade they are being asked to conduct.

And so it is with Nick Harkaway’s George Smiley novel, “Karla’s Choice”. Before I knew it the long, slow build was behind me and there was no turning back. We were off and (literally) running.

Until I crashed into this:

“Morris was rated average by Personnel, and hardly existed for the likes of Haydon and Control. The son of a provincial engineer, he was a striver who prized process over instinct and reportedly had no operational flare.”

No.

No no no no no.

Flares are what you shoot up into the sky to facilitate your rescue at sea. Or the outward curve at the bottom of a pair of trousers. (Or, for those of us who were there, the trousers themselves: “Hey man, I dig your flares”.)

Leaving aside the remote possibility that what Morris was devoid of (operationally) was either or both of those kinds of flares, it is highly likely – in fact if I were a gambling person I would put money on it – that it was “operational flair”, not “operational flare”, that Morris was missing.

As with the other two errors I found in this otherwise quite entertaining yarn, many people would probably read over this one without blinking. But that shouldn’t make it okay. The author’s publisher has allowed him to use the wrong word three times in the one book. That seems bad. (What’s worse, in the author’s acknowledgments he publicly, by name, thanks his copy editor. Awkward!)

What all of this serves to remind me is that there are many reasons why I am happy that my name doesn’t appear anywhere near any of the judgments I have worked on. Plausible deniability is a useful tool to have in one’s back pocket (the back pocket of one’s flares, perhaps).

When I noted the first of these errors, I didn’t for a minute think I would be writing about a second, let alone a third. I merely thought it was a surprising thing to find in a professionally edited book, and that it might serve as a salutary lesson for those of you embarking on the role of judge’s associate, and particularly the large part of that role that will involve proofing your judge’s judgments.

The problem with mistakes in a published book is that they are going to have one of two consequences. The first is neutral: the reader may not notice them, in which case no harm has been done. The second is deleterious: the kind of reader who is predisposed to notice mistakes (guilty as charged, your Honour) is likely to extrapolate from those mistakes to form a less favourable view of both the book and the author than they would otherwise have had. In other words, even small mistakes can easily call into question the credibility of the whole enterprise.

And if this is the case with a work of – here he slides his glasses down his nose and, with a faintly suppressed sneer, looks over them at the camera – “genre fiction” (disclaimer: I don’t actually view Le Carre’s own novels as genre fiction), it can only be more serious when we are talking about mistakes in published judgments. Every word of those is likely to be crawled over and minutely parsed, not by casual readers but by professionals in the field, in order that pertinent bits of the judgment might be thrown at judges or opposing counsel to make a forensic point. Mistakes are going to be noticed. Whether they cast doubt on the judge’s broader reasoning processes might be open to question; but they certainly aren’t going to be doing anything good, or helpful, or positive.

With all the resources that Penguin has at its disposal, these three mistakes still managed to escape. It is perhaps a little sobering to think that all your judge has is you. But, hey, no pressure!