Hot Typos

Your article, “The Typo as Season’s Greeting” (The Book Review, Dec. 27) reminded me of a lovely typo. My late husband, Don Rico, was the author of more than 60 (published) novels. All were paperbacks, many under pseudonyms. He wrote mysteries, gothics, westerns, spoofy detectives. I edited and proofed for him.

One day I was editing a hard-boiled detective story. There was a description of the hero tracking the villain up a dusty stairwell to his lair. The door carefully opened, the hero’s eyes became adjusted to the dim light in the room where “three dirty widows looked out on an alley.”

Don and I spent a while considering the three widows, why they were dirty, in what sense, and what they were seeing in that alley.

MICHELE HART