The other part of disbelief is that Eric has these bills hanging in a waterproof satchel over the side of the boat. Again, using the internet, I found that a single bill weighs 1 gram. Let's go top end and say that ALL 30 million is in $1000 bills; not how the author described, but he didn't give an exact count of each denomination. This is "best case." $30 million would be 30,000 bills. Which would be 30kg? Or 66 lbs US measure. That's a lot of weight to hang in a satchel over the side of a boat. If you split the currency 2:1 in favor of the 1000, then you're looking at 40k bills and 40kg or 88 lbs.
And this is just a factor of weight. How much space would 30k bills or 40k bills take up? Certainly more than a waterproof satchel over the side of a boat. Thankfully, many people on the internet have tackled the space issue. One site (www.cockeyed.com/inside/million/million.html) breaks it down step by step and has pictures. 10,000 bills take up 643 cu inches. Multiply by 3 to get the smallest ($1000 bills) amount of space you'd need; basically three large briefcases.
But coming back to the fact - something Eric missed - that $500 and $1000 bills aren't circulated as US currency, you're left with $100s. That's the largest, still circulated, US bill on the market. $30 million in $100s would be 300k bills; 300kg; 661 pounds. 30 large briefcases. It would fill the cabin of the boat Eric uses in the story!
Dontca just love fiction? I think I'm going to stop reading Eric's book.
Another book I just had to put down for the same reason - disbelief- was one of Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" books. I pulled my way through two of them, but kept coming back to Reacher's childhood as a military brat.
Child has his protagonist moving every 6 to 8 months in the military. That doesn’t happen. The Government can't afford to move individual soldiers that often, not to mention soldiers with families. Sure, the soldier might be deployed into combat, but the family would stay behind. The soldier, when his combat tour was finished, would be sent back home - to the base he left.
Having served four years in the US Army, I can tell you that the shortest full-duty assignment is one year - to hardship locations (Turkey was one such location because you can't take your family; I was there 13 months). Most full-duty assignments are two to three years long. My tour on Ft Lewis was just under 2 - 1/2 years long; about 28 months. Had I declined the option to go overseas, I would have finished my enlistment in Ft. Lewis. Had I re-enlisted after Turkey, I had options for 3 year tours in England and New Hampshire (as a trainer).
I wonder how Child's Jack Reacher series could be so popular with so much bad information. It occurs to me that most people haven't been in the military and aren't from military families. The popular myth for military life is one of constant upheaval; always on the go; moving from place to place. It would seem that way, if you lived your whole life in one town, one house - you would see moving every 2 to 3 years as constant upheaval. But my childhood was closer to Jack Reacher's than most. In fact, except for the military family part, it was very much like what Child describes for Jack and his family. The funny thing is I joined the Army for stability. It was a chance for me to stay in one place for a while - after a few months each training in New Jersey and Massachusetts.
But, I bullied my way through two of Lee's books -"okay, Child's never been in the military." However, when he started writing as if he was doing a 1-hour TV show… That was too much. His characters dusted fingerprints at 9am and had results by 10:45! Ballistics before noon. DNA matches by dinner. Lee, it's a book! You can move time in amazing ways in a book. Two weeks later, I'm writing this sentence. A year went by before this one was typed. I'm close to retirement now. And golly, I was only 34 when I started typing this paragraph.
In TV land, with shows like "CSI" and "Law and Order," they only have an hour of air time. They have to move things faster, discover things impossibly sooner than reality. But in a book, you can choose to tell it like it is! It takes weeks to search a database for finger prints. It takes months and months to extract and match DNA. Crime labs are busy. They're not a bunch of Hummer-driving geeks with really expensive high-tech equipment, just sitting around waiting for evidence to fall into their laps. Like most government agencies, they're over-worked and under-staffed and short-budgeted.
I think writers have become lazy. It's much easier to regurgitate what you've seen on TV. "If the TV audience believes it, I can write it that way and I don't have to find out how long it really takes to match finger prints or DNA."
I think what Lee Child needs is a police ride-along and a day-visit to any US crime lab. And Eric Van Lustbader needs a week-long trip to the US without his handler and credit cards. Or maybe just a few minutes training in Google Searches.
[UPDATE]
I did some Google searching of my own on Eric Van Lustbader. I was very surprised to learn that he was born and raised in New York! How does an American by birth screw up our currency so badly? I know, it's a work of fiction. Point of fact, a spy novel. There are certain things we accept in that genre of fiction. Gravity works. There is only one star in the solar system and only one moon orbiting planet earh. People, plants, and animals fit our normal observed world - it's not a sci-fi spy novel after all - like Total Recall. There are some things we expect can and will be fictionalized - corrupt governments, secret cabals, super soldiers with physical and mental capabilities beyond ordinary. But creating and using new forms of money? Defying the laws of mass? Sir Isaac Newton would roll-over if he could (maybe in a ghost story). Does anyone else feel this way? That this type of fiction should *mostly* conform to our known universe? Please comment either way.
