This was a flagrant breach of one of the oldest and most revered traditions in Israel. It could easily have been omitted. What we have is an account surely sympathetic to David, but by an author who seems willing to show us his defects along with his virtues. It seems unlikely that the author is fancifully creating one cover-up after another to prevent the exposure of David as a multiple murderer. But it cannot be performed simplistically or automatically.
Judgment is required.
Several months before I read McKenzie's biography of David, I had a discussion with one of the great Bible critics of our generation, David Noel Freedman, the general editor of the Anchor Bible series. Maybe we never will. To me, the criterion is realism. We have historical accounts of many remarkable adventurers who did things that were hard to believe. Instead of capturing the grand sweep of David's life, McKenzie reduces David to nothing but, as he says, a petty tyrant.