When the Author Takes on Too Much of Their Subject’s Character

When Quentin Rowan published his first spy novel, Assassin of Secrets, it was initially received with glowing reviews. But five days after its release, it became clear that the novel had been almost entirely plagiarized, and the publisher immediately recalled the sixty-five hundred copies and issued an apology. Apparently, Rowan had mastered not the skill of writing a good spy novel but the mechanics of literary cut-and-paste. 

In her piece about…