A couple of points regarding the two things that “drew away from [your] personal enjoyment of this book”:

The character of Doc Wilde is a direct, loving homage to the pulp hero Doc Savage, whose monthly magazine during the Depression was second only to The Shadow in popularity. In fact, Grandpa Wilde, as the original Doc Wilde who was famous in the thirties and forties, is my intertextual acknowledgment that the original hero is parent to the current hero, but also speaks to the fact that Wilde is his own man. As similar as he is to Savage, he is also very different in ways (as is Grandpa Wilde, who has become warmer and not so stern over the decades).

Doc Savage was the ur-superhero who inspired the creators of Superman, Batman, James Bond and many other heroic literary figures. Like Doc Wilde, he was not superhuman, but was pretty much the ideal human (except in his rather stunted emotional development). He was the exemplar of excellence; Jack of All Trades, Master of All.

So, Doc Wilde comes by his perfection honestly. There are challenges in writing about someone so perfect, but doing so is true to the genre I’m playing in. Criticizing a Doc Savage tale for the perfection of the hero is missing the point, just as criticizing a Superman story because Superman is so much a superman is missing the point. And Doc Savage, and Doc Wilde, are, unlike Superman, mortal, vulnerable men who can be killed by a bullet. In that, they’re very similar to Batman. For all their perfection, they’re still only human. (And Doc Wilde, honestly, is a more emotionally accessible hero than Savage ever was).

Still, you either like that sort of thing or you don’t. You didn’t care for Doc Wilde as a character, just as some folks don’t care for Superman as a character for similar reasons. But that exemplary human character, while not the way to interest you, is true to the genre and enjoyable to those who like that genre.

The other point, about the timeline, is only a problem in the advance reading copy. The twenty days thing was a remnant from an earlier draft, and I caught the discrepancy and fixed it before the actual publication of the novel. This was one of those situations referred to in the caveat at the front of ARCs, “In quoting from this book for reviews…it is essential that the final printed book be referred to, since the author may make changes before the book goes to press.”

Of course, you can’t be faulted for not returning to the final book to pick through the small details across various chapters to verify the timeline. I’m actually impressed you noticed the discrepancy, which lingered through various revisions and editorial passes to be actually printed in the ARC before I caught it myself.

All that said, it either works for you or it doesn’t. I’m glad you at least got some enjoyment from it, even if it wasn’t enough to bring you back for more.

Best,

Tim
http://www.DocWilde.com