In the wake of yesterday's news that Q.R. Markham plagiarized much of his critically-praised debut, Assassin of Secrets, from several well-known spy novels, I've seen several curt comments on Twitter to the effect that plagiarism is bad and all, but we ought to stop flogging Markham and move on.
I tried a couple of times to sum up my thoughts in a tweet, but found I needed a bit more space. I don't object to Markham himself, but to the brazen way any plagiarism breaks readers' trust that when authors sign their names to work, it is genuinely their work.
Edward Champion has an extensive accounting of Markham's plagiarism.
1 comment:
It was just too extensive to be anything but blatant theft. If he stole anything else, he'd be going to jail.
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