The Orion Team. discussion

Exactly what is says on the tin. What sort of things cause you to do a double take, mutter "Seriously?!" and make you put down a spy thriller which has committed one implausibility too many? Is it a plot hole? Action scenes which take a sledgehammer to the laws of physics? Or something else entirely? As always would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

For me, it would probably be action scenes which break the laws of physics. Breaches of tradecraft come second as I'm not as good at noticing them.

Protagonists not showing the effect of one or more gunshot wounds.

Another sort of implausibility that makes me throw down a book is when research is done shoddily.

Things like "a .357 MAGNUM SIG Sauer P226" or the infamous "silenced revolver" error which could be the poster child of bad research grind my gears.

With the Internet, even your average Joe can accurately get details of the things he wishes to put in his book.

I like things like putting a magazine into a revolver or a .11 caliber pistol.Oh and the ever popular "flicking the safety" on a revolver. For while there have been a small number of revolvers made with safety switches the writers never seem to have the character using those revolvers (Webley-Fosbery,French contract S&W Model 10's etc.) Pretty unique models.

Car chases in which the people who drive are able to shoot accurately are also a particular sticking point for me. The character who drives is more likely to get distracted and crash and will probably hit squat with whatever weapon they're using.

How about the Robert Ludlum heroes. They're faster, smarter, stronger, tougher than everybody else. And they're obnoxious because they tell everybody how smart they are and how stupid everyone else is. Louis L'Amour was bad about that. In almost all of his novels the hero would get shot,stabbed and stomped by a horse. He would spend a couple pages getting better and reading several volumes and then come back and kill all the bad guys.

Anything written by Matthew Reilly since Ice Station. Especially the cringeworthy Jack West series which is one of the worst things I have ever read.

Having whole departments of government suddenly turn rogue, like what happened with SHIELD turning into HYDRA. Secret agents are supposed to be vetted very tightly for their loyalty. To have one agent turn rogue or be revealed to be an enemy mole is believable, but to have half of your people turn coat suddenly?

Personnel of high authority being in situations where they shouldn't be or belong and who clearly lack the necessary training and tradecraft to survive in said situations.

For example, in Ben Coes, Eye For An Eye, at one point in the book the Chinese Ambassador to the UK is actively helping coordinate an attempt to kill the main character....while said main character is in a dangerous proximity to him. As you would expect, it does not go well for the ambassador who along with an MSS hit squad, perishes.

It was the fact that an ambassador of all people, someone who wouldn't have the required training/knowledge to conduct an operation was the one barking orders that snapped my suspension of disbelief. If the author had used "station chief" instead I would have understood but a diplomat? Took me a month to pick up the book again in order to finish it.

Samuel wrote: "Personnel of high authority being in situations where they shouldn't be or belong and who clearly lack the necessary training and tradecraft to survive in said situations.

For example, in Ben Co..."

A good one indeed. There are plenty of examples of this happening in past history, especially when aristocrats got positions because of their bloodline rather than for their competences. Today, however, with aristocratic titles and royal bloodlines mostly meaningless in politics and public administration, except in a few Gulf states, incompetents tend to be weeded out quickly in dangerous jobs, like spying, terrorism and counter-terrorism.

I read the spy thriller The Expats not too long ago and really enjoyed it, but there one scene that lost me. Two operatives get into a fight, end up drawing their weapons simultaneously, and stand there with their pistols trained on each other. Eventually one lowers her weapon and the situation is diffused.

Would never happen. Someone would have been shot.

Read this once. The author's style is to let his imagination run wild and not be constrained by the boundaries of "realism" and "believability". As I've read some of his other works, which were....page turning and somewhat good at parodying the original Ian Fleming novels....my suspension of disbelief was initially tolerant. However, there was a part of the book which fried my suspension of disbelief to a crisp. It involved an attempted killing with the killer using her employers VINTAGE ROLLS-ROYCE as the getaway vehicle. As you would expect, this glaringly dumb breach of trade-craft drops UK law enforcement on top of their heads. In a better written spy thriller, the professional killer would have at least taken the time to buy or steal something less obtrusive like a Ford Transit van or Vauxhall Astra and set up escape plans in the event the op went wrong (and it did)

In this book, one of the main characters transfers from being an analyst in the DNI to the NCS after training to be a field officer. The problem I had however was that she was psychologically damaged to a horrendous degree and has gotten addicted to morphine when recovering from mutilation she suffered at the hands of the antagonist in the second book. In that series, psychological stability evaluations don't seem to be exist. It was the fact that the CIA was willing to send someone wholly unsuitable for a sensitive mission where everything could go wrong (interrogation of a target in one of Spain's largest cities) that broke my suspension of disbelief. Her actions also caused the death of multiple citizens when facilitating the exfiltration of her partners on the operation. In real life or in another series, she would have been sidelined with counseling, which is what she really needed rather than being used to create needless drama.

Nick wrote: "Anything written by Matthew Reilly since Ice Station. Especially the cringeworthy Jack West series which is one of the worst things I have ever read."

Amen!

Dual Wielding automatic weapons.

(Now, I'll give dual wielding pistols a pass. In Tom Wood's The Hunter, it's used pretty realistically as a tactic (the main character was cornered in a bathroom and trying to hold off a shooter armed with a Heckler and Koch MP5K. The protagonist used the two pistols he has to lay down suppressing fire in a sufficient volume to distract the gunman long enough to set off an explosion. What makes it impressive is that the main character acknowledges that he's not aiming for accuracy when he pulls off "guns akimbo", but volume of fire).

In the book pictured above, the main antagonist at one point dual wielded two Heckler and Koch UMP submachine guns...on fully automatic....with pinpoint accuracy.
Click the wikipedia article link below if you want to understand how over the top and impossible such a thing would be. Among the things you would need to pull off such a thing is blind luck and....decent upper body strength.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_...

I'd say that all of the Grey Man novels break the belief barrier. They are awesome books and I personally LOVE them but there is no way in hell it's possible to do what he does against the multitudes of ppl he faces off against every time. Oh well, I love the books

I am with Samuel about dual full auto. It's insanely impossible to do accurately.

Hi, folks. And thanks for the invitation to join this group; I appreciate it. For me, the thing that breaks suspension of disbelief the most is an unbelievable coincidence. I try to avoid it in my own writing--and when I speak to writers' groups, I always mention this. The story should never depend on an unlikely coincidence or a character's lucky break.

Tom wrote: "Hi, folks. And thanks for the invitation to join this group; I appreciate it. For me, the thing that breaks suspension of disbelief the most is an unbelievable coincidence. I try to avoid it in my ..."

More and more books rely on getting a lucky break as a plot device. Many of the best sellers have this as a focal point, where everything that is going bad for the hero suddenly turns good due to this lucky break.

Gopal (The Minion) wrote: "Tom wrote: "Hi, folks. And thanks for the invitation to join this group; I appreciate it. For me, the thing that breaks suspension of disbelief the most is an unbelievable coincidence. I try to avo..."

You certainly see it in some books from time to time. In the worst cases, you might even have a character say something like: "I never would have believed it, but…."

Gopal (The Minion) wrote: "Tom wrote: "Hi, folks. And thanks for the invitation to join this group; I appreciate it. For me, the thing that breaks suspension of disbelief the most is an unbelievable coincidence. I try to avo..."

Coincidences are quite common....but are they impossible to avoid or can it be done with a bit of work on the author's part?

There was a time when that "lucky break" convention was pulled off relatively seamlessly in a counter-terrorist thriller. It involved a target getting away from the main characters, but with him losing a laptop to them.

They didn't know the target's actual identity but they did know that he was a defense contractor working for the USAF and would have to have gotten a security clearance. One of the protagonists then makes the observation that he would have needed a fingerprint scan to get his security clearance and suggests to get a print off the laptop which he used before being forced to escape.

In writing, there's an exception to every rule. Though avoiding coincidences is always a good idea, I can see how a good author could get away with it if done properly. Here's the litmus test: Does it make the reader go "Hmm…?" Or does it make the reader say, "Aw, give me a break!"

The son of a sitting President as a secret agent.

James wrote: "The son of a sitting President as a secret agent."

Pains me a little to admit it but that's a good point. Sooner or later one of the people in the Ryanverse who hate President Jack Ryan's guts are going to have to notice his son gallivanting around places such as sunny Tehran (where the next continuation novel is set) and try mount a snatch and grab operation.

Well....Tom's point about coincidences occurred in a book I just finished today, and it ruined a story which could have ended on a dark, hopeful note, but instead had to be dragged out for one more action sequence.

Basically, the main protagonists have been lugging around one of the antagonists who they've detained. When they've gotten to safety, they're about to shoot the prisoner, ignoring his explanation on why he got his hands on a cellphone (they fear he's compromised them while he was phoning one of his ex-colleagues.)

Furthermore, they scoff at his last request to go save his surviving associates. Just as the protagonists open fire and call it a day, they get a call from the client who conveniently contracts them to do what their prisoner begged them to do. Which forces them to head back into enemy territory to hunt for some cut-throats who aren't really familiar with the concept of gratitude and more versed in betrayal and incompetence. What's more, lets just say the "package" did not get delivered, and took out a character who had just reached the end of the road to redemption.

Sounds like Samuel found a telling example. I once had a writing teacher who had a great saying about unlikely coincidences. She said, "You can't have pigs falling from the sky."

Apparently your teacher never met some of the girls I skydived with.

Jack wrote: "Apparently your teacher never met some of the girls I skydived with."

Can never get that image out of my mind's eye now...

Similar post from another group. Still in development though. We'll be able to compare notes. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Isn't it unfortunate when one has to break suspension of disbelief due to plot circumstances? Even the great Vince Flynn was guilty of this. At the start of the book, Mr Rapp gets shot. His would-be murderer has his sprawled on the ground, at her mercy.

Normally, standard procedure dictates a shot to the head in order to take into account for body armor. SHE DOESN'T DO IT.

Panicking, she decides she's behind schedule and prematurely runs to the getaway car. And Rapp then gets back up due to his custom trench coat,
mad as hell and ready to come after them.

Off on a slightly related tangent. I found this essay. About Intelligence officers and the preconceptions that have never died due to spy fiction. http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/...

Finally! Some true definitions of spies and intelligence officers. There should be more 'spy' thrillers done reflecting that reality.

Samuel wrote: "Off on a slightly related tangent. I found this essay. About Intelligence officers and the preconceptions that have never died due to spy fiction. http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/......"

I blame Joseph Conrad and Ian Fleming for creating the misconception about officers and agents.
Secret Agent....title of the world's first thriller about international terrorism and the primary umbrella term for spies and assassins Sure the term gives a lot of room for narrative, but it's a small irritation nonetheless. Paramilitary officer or government assassin is much better at describing guys like Bond or Rapp.

Here's a unique example. In this book, two private military contractors murder everyone in the main character's family. As you would expect he goes for revenge. However he runs into them twice over the course of the book and doesn't kill them despite them being a clear and present danger to his person and clearly knowing that they are the ones who are responsible. Instead he humiliates and leaves them be, for an extremely flimsy reason even when he has the opportunity to put a bullet in each of their backs. In most spy thrillers, those triggermen would have been the first to die.

Only in their third encounter does he kill them although that situation is more understandable since they were trying to kill an ally.

Samuel wrote: "

Here's a unique example. In this book, two private military contractors murder everyone in the main character's family. As you would expect he goes for revenge. Howe..."



Another one from here. A critical plot point involves the use of facial prosthetics to disguise the main character as a PRC MSS paramilitary officer. While such prosthetics exist and the CIA has developed them, I don't think they haven't advanced far enough to the level described in the book. The main character would have been rumbled and shot before he could get in range of the man he wanted to kill.

Early on in his writing career, critically aclaimed counter-terrorist thriller writer Brad Taylor wrote an article for the huffington post about suspension of disbelief breakers. Very good reading.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brad-ta...

Samuel wrote: "Early on in his writing career, critically aclaimed counter-terrorist thriller writer Brad Taylor wrote an article for the huffington post about suspension of disbelief breakers. Very good reading...."

Shooting on motorcycles. Mission Impossible 5 beautifully parodied it with one of their action scenes. A shooter was trying to kill E. Hunt at 120 miles an hour when they're both on motorcycles. He manages to aim his big suppressed SIG-Sauer and keep his bike steady. He doesn't look in front of him. A truck which he did not see crashes into his bike and kills him before he can even pull the trigger.

Saw one from a recent review of this book by one of our group members. Lets call it "The lazy tracking capability."
It's where the main character supposedly gets untraceable travel documents, a false identity and even with all these precautions, the antagonists through some highly unconvincing means manage to penetrate the subterfuge and stay on on the heels of the hero.

Interesting analysis of a point of confusion by movie directors.
http://www.stripes.com/blogs/the-rumo...

If you are going to assassinate someone. It should be simple. The hard part is the prep work. That's the story.120 mph on a bike? No. You get close, you make a friend, you share a drink, a meal, a laugh. Then you cut their FKN head off.

Well to be fair to the hit squad, the circumstances turned it into a rush job. Ethan Hunt had stolen a sum of money from them and was making a break for the outskirts of Tangier on a motorcycle. No time to plan. Had to "do it live" so to speak.

Samuel wrote: "Well to be fair to the hit squad, the circumstances turned it into a rush job. Ethan Hunt had stolen a sum of money from them and was making a break for the outskirts of Tangier on a motorcycle. No..."

I guess that's fun to read too.

Yeah. Considerably ;)

Going to see another action film which from looking at the trailer, does some interesting things with a turboprop plane. It crashes and becomes something like a bobsled. I'll tell you more about it after I've seen it.

Samuel wrote: "Going to see another action film which from looking at the trailer, does some interesting things with a turboprop plane. It crashes and becomes something like a bobsled. I'll tell you more about it..."

Wasn't that flight of the Phoenix or some such?

Actually it was the new James Bond film, a series which runs on breaking suspension of disbelief for the viewers enjoyment. The scene in question was pretty fun stuff actually. 007 hijacked a turboprop plane and is chasing after two Land Rovers and the fastest Range Rover ever made. He attempts to interdict them by playing a game of chicken through the Austrian forests they're in. Takes one out, tries to ram the Range Rover but the wings get torn off. However he still has the engines dragging the plane along, which basically turns the whole thing into a motorized bobsled which he uses to pull off a lethal intercept.

Samuel wrote: "Actually it was the new James Bond film, a series which runs on breaking suspension of disbelief for the viewers enjoyment. The scene in question was pretty fun stuff actually. 007 hijacked a turbo..."

It was one of a number of very good scenes in the film, although overall I thought it was just "okay" the links to Bond's past and the previous three films just came over as daft and not making sense.....

True. All Bond films has their writing problems and this one is no exception. It's whether they can give you enough spectacle to distract the viewer and up until act 3 where the writing problems reared their ugly head with a vengeance, they succeeded with me. At any rate, I found SPECTRE more enjoyable to watch than Quantum Of Solace and would say that it's not as bad as some of the more vitriolic critics claim it is.

I agree with you however that the execution of attempting to merge the story arcs into one big one was botched somewhat.