>:-( The Suspect by L.R. Wright had to give this 2 stars even though the story is 4 stars

[Karin]

I rated this book down because the author lives in Vancouver and still couldn't get the Sunshine Coast (the one in British Columbia) right! I won't inundate you with all of the the mistakes, but here are two. One, she said there is gravel on the beach in Davis Bay (which is one of areas that was never a village) when it's a pebble beach (aka slate beach in the UK--smooth stones much larger than gravel, but still small--photo of this beach below. There is a sandbar when the tide is out, but that's irrelevant to the story), she called some places villages that never were, etc. In addition, there are deserts in BC that get significantly more hours of sunshine than the Sunshine Coast. In addition, she made serious mistakes about how much sunshine this stretch of coast actually gets--it's not even close to being in the top 10 sunniest spots in Canada. I have no idea where she got this misinformation, but I was still living in BC when this book was written.

This book won the 1986 Edgar Award for best novel and was also a nominee for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for the same years.

The TV series based on this book is even worse because Fox opted to pick it up, so it was filmed there with the same place names, but moved to the States and the location changed to where there are already sets. This means that some of the investigations are ludicrous because if there were a town police force in Gibsons (there isn't, it's the RCMP) in no way would they have jurisdiction in Wilson's Creek!

Note to self: never watch a TV show or read a novel set where I've lived unless the author lives there and knows their stuff.

[Booknblues]

I read this in 2010 and having no knowledge of the sunshine coast rated it much higher.

[Karin]

Booknblues wrote: "I read this in 2010 and having no knowledge of the sunshine coast rated it much higher."

Yes, and if it were set somewhere I wasn't familiar with, it would have been 4 stars from me, too.