Sunday, August 29, 2010

Question of the Day

So I'm reading this highly acclaimed crime novel, and on page 380 I come to the part where the protagonist and a sheriff are looking at a murder scene. The murder weapon is a .22 revolver. "The sheriff picked it up and flipped out the cylinder. 'The shooter took his brass with him,' he said."

I don't get it. Why take the brass from a revolver and leave the pistol there? Help me out here.

9 comments:

sandra seamans said...

maybe the shooter remembered his fingerprints were on the brass? Or the author saw one too many TV shows where the shooter policed his brass?

Anonymous said...

Tailor-made bullets with his name etched on the casings? I'd look for a very vain shooter.

Terrill Lee Lankford said...

Maybe he's just a good recycler.

Gar Haywood said...

Crider, what's your problem? Did you think this was a "highly acclaimed crime novel" because everything in it makes sense? Exactly how high do you want to set the bar for "highly acclaimed" crime novels? Give an author who can tell a hell of a story but can't be bothered with trivialities like verisimilitude a break, willya?

Geez, you Old School curmudgeons...

Unknown said...

I have to admit that the book tells a hell of a story, but not much of it makes any sense at all, at least not to me.

Cap'n Bob said...

The brass isn't ejected from a revolver anyway, so the scene makes no sense in more ways than one. What was the name of this gem?

lastromantic49 said...

Ran across something similar in a Robert B. Parker novel I read recently. Shooter was using a revolver and it made a point about him policing his brass. I'm wondering, "why? How many times did he reload?" It seemed like he only fired a few shots. I see this every now and then, but I wasn't expecting it from Parker.

Mel Odom said...

Well, Bill, that was obviously a copy editor mistake. One with a neat freak fetish and an admiration for CSI.

All good pistoleers know you don't recycle brass from a wheel gun.

Stephen B. said...

Right, but also why throw down a good gun or a revolver, and take the shells.

Maybe the cartidges were removed and the gun slipped from someone's pocket unnoticed.

Maybe it was planted but the bullets removed; prevent discovery of the make of the bullet. ??

It's perplexting, yes.