"

 Editorial issues 

There are points where Highsmith betrays her lack of familiarity with 1980s New York City. I'd like to find a source that comments on this. I find it distracting and careless, and I wonder why her publisher, UK or US, didn't think these things worth fixing. No New Yorker has ever ordered a ""white coffee"" or handed someone a ""fiver"" or written ""The Bronx"" with a capital T. By the 1980s the police were not ""the fuzz"", even ironically, and Chelsea is Chelsea or perhaps the Chelsea neighborhood, never ""the Chelsea district"". The video arcade where Ralph works is on Eighth Avenue in the 80s, which doesn't exist, since that's Central Park West. Then, without explanation, it's on Broadway in the 80s. And nowhere in the West 80s would one have found anything like the arcade as described, not even in the 80s when NYC was going through a very rough period.   "