Spoilers in the… pictures?

Submitted by esbforever t3_10pyyjq in books

This is a new one for me. Currently reading Red Notice, a true story of a western investor in Russia whose colleague apparently gets murdered. Captivating read so far.

So I’m about halfway through the book, and nobody’s been murdered yet. As is often the case halfway through a non-fiction book, we get to the pictures montage. First page is his family, very cute. Second page is the murder victim. What?!

I’ve never seen this before and I can’t believe it passed the editing stages. I’m really annoyed! Would you be?

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LackadaisicalWolf t1_j6nq63h wrote

Isn't Red Notice a nonfiction book? I'm pretty sure it isn't a spoiler if it's nonfiction.

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esbforever OP t1_j6nqog0 wrote

Interesting take. There can’t be spoilers for real-life, somewhat obscure, events? I’d hardly call the murder of this person, however tragic, something in the common knowledge domain.

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LackadaisicalWolf t1_j6nvbyg wrote

Not in the common knowledge domain, no, but I don't consider real life events spoilers. Someone's murder isn't a spoiler, it's a tragic event.

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esbforever OP t1_j6nzn1j wrote

I think it’s more that it was clearly inadvertently spoiled by a poor publishing decision. You can debate the nature of a “spoiler” but either way there is no way the author intended this. Would you agree?

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LackadaisicalWolf t1_j6p2yzk wrote

I honestly have no idea what the author's intentions were. The case was, at least in my opinion, heavily written about when it happened. It's not some obscure thing.

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Jack-Campin t1_j6n7ftl wrote

If you ever get a copy of Charlotte Roche's Wetlands you'll need to forget about the avocado on the front.

And complain to Dickens about the cover of the 1859 edition of A Tale of Two Cities. The ending is right there in the middle.

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fragments_shored t1_j6oh89x wrote

This has a lot to do with how books are printed and bound - it's typically cheaper and more efficient to print the photo sections (which often use a different paper stock than the rest of the book) and then bundle and bind those in the center of the whole book. So it's less a question of editing and more a necessary evil to minimize production costs and maximize profits on the sale price.

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petereeflea t1_j6mus6x wrote

Yes. Why would anyone do that? Is it who you thought it would be?

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esbforever OP t1_j6mwpao wrote

Literally the character hasn’t even been introduced yet!

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