Suspension of Disbelief

Stirring

Last Thursday (Thanksgiving), I had intended to make this fancy mac & cheese (French Onion Soup Mac and Cheese), but by the time I'd finished the 10k and come home and cleaned up, I didn't have 2 1/2 hours before I needed to get in my car. So I just brought the vegetarian gravy I'd already made, and that was fine because there was already too much food.

Today I finally got around to making the fancy mac and cheese. (Meh. It was fine, and my kitchen smells divine, but I feel like the cheese overpowered the caramelized onions that I spent over an hour stirring so I wouldn't bother making it again.)

While I was stirring onions and bechamel, I listened to the first couple hours of The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths. It's a British police procedural (-ish, because the main character is actually an archeologist but she has a child with a detective chief inspector and POV changes to him in some chapters). The characters are interesting — I haven't really gotten far enough to find out if the mystery part holds up overall.

Suspension Failure

Here's the start of it: a body is found behind a wall in a very old building. Multiple times, the remains are referred to as an "articulated skeleton". We know there's no soft tissue because the archeologist can clearly see a surgical plate on one of the bones. (I'm not entirely sure why the archeologist is getting it out from the space behind the wall instead of the police, but we'll pretend that makes sense because otherwise our main character doesn't have a reason to get involved.)

Here's the problem: an articulated skeleton is a set of bones held in place by pins and wires to approximate the location of the bones in a living body. But as far as I can tell, there are no pins or wires on the skeleton removed from behind this wall. Unless I've missed something, the author is picturing a skeleton that hasn't fallen apart. But if the soft tissues are gone, there's nothing to hold it together.

I really feel like I must have missed something somewhere. Or maybe there's another meaning of "articulated skeleton" that I haven't been able to find?

This book is traditionally published. (I wouldn't have named the title and author if it hadn't been.) There had to have been multiple editors — familiar with the genre — who looked at this. How did nobody stop and say, "hey, that's not what an articulated skeleton is"?

So now I'm thinking more about how this skeleton is held together (a trivial thing that has no bearing on the mystery) than the actual plot of the book. My suspension of disbelief is dragging on the ground.

Ugh. I still feel like I must be missing something.

Obligatory Cat Picture

This is Akasha, mother of vampires. Or at least, mother of the six kittens in my spare room who are named after vampires. The kittens are weaned and Akasha kept trying to get out, so she went back to the shelter today so she can be spayed and adopted.

She's a super sweet cat. Hopefully she'll find a good home soon!