Spot The Textual Difference

Benoni Strang converses with a colleague:

"Emma Reinhart shivered a bit. She had glimpsed the fanatic."

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 1-291 AT Prologue, Y minus 5, p. 30.

"Andrew Drake, despite his anglicized name, was also a Ukrainian, and a fanatic."

-Frederick Forsyth, The Devil's Alternative (London, 1980), Prologue, p. 13.

We are to understand that both Strang and Drake are fanatics. However, in Anderson's text, we have just read Strang's dialogue so we can make our own judgment. We understand that the statement that Strang is a fanatic is made from Emma Reinhart's point of view. We do not necessarily accept any character's opinions, e.g., in Anderson's The Man Who Counts, Eric Wace's opinion that Nicholas van Rijn is a parasite. There are times when we can be fairly certain that a character's opinion does match that of the author, e.g., Manse Everard's statement that rent control always guarantees slums. In Mirkheim, we are to understand that Emma's assessment of Strang is accurate.

In Forsyth's text, the omniscient narrator merely informs us that Drake is a fanatic so that we have to accept this as a fact at least within the parameters of this particular narrative. Given the differences between Forsyth's world-view and mine, it is quite possible that someone whom he describes as a fanatic I would think of as a reasonable guy!