Several days ago, I posted this comment on my Facebook profile and, as it turned out from the comments, I’m not the only one who thought the author was breaking point-of-view rules:

I’m reading an interesting mystery, filled with misdirection and clues that may or may not be true.

I won’t tell you what it is because I’m not here to bash the author but to mention point-of-view errors that mar the book. Like many novels, this one is told in alternating chapters about the major characters, each in a third-person restricted point of view.

This means that if the character doesn’t see it, hear it, think it, or intuit it, it (whatever) can’t be there.

What mars these chapters is the intrusion of the suddenly omniscient author who says things like:

“Bob did not see the man hiding in the shadows behind the steps.”

“Sally turned off the TV set just before a major story from her hometown aired. Had she seen it, she would have done things differently.”

You can do this if you’re writing from a consistently omniscient viewpoint. If you’re writing from inside a character’s head in first or third person, you’re playing games with the reader.

Most of those commenting thought the writer as sloppy and/or that the book needed a better editor. One person mentioned the distinction between “close” and “distant” third person. As Writer’s Digest puts it, “The advantage of middle-distance and far-distance third person is that instead of hearing the opinions and reactions of one person, the POV character, the reader can now hear those of two people: POV character and author. Distant third person lets the author put in his two-cents’ worth of interpretation of events.” Frankly, I think this is an abomination because the author has intruded himself or herself into the story.

So, what do you think?

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Eulalie and Washerwoman,” one of the three novels in the Florida Folk Magic Series in which the narrator is a cat.