Friday, September 2, 2011

The Devil Colony (2011) novel

Original Novel Title: The Devil Colony: A Sigma Force Novel
Author: James Rollins
Publisher: William Morrow, 2011.

Rollins' novel The Devil Colony contains a typical mischaracterization of an archives as a museum. In this case, it is really inexcusable since he's profiling the United States National Archives which even has the word archives in its name. Yet he insists on calling it a museum, not once, but at least twice.

"Painter scrunched his brow. Why was Seichan sniffing around the National Archives? The museum was a storehouse of America's historical manuscripts and documents. ..." (p. 84)

Charpter 9 of Part 1 has some of the characters visiting the National Archives very late at night:

"Dr. Eric Heisman was one of the museum's [National Archives'] curators, specializing in Colonial American history." (p. 88)

And again on page 91 Dr. Heisman is referred to as a curator.