And some people do take trains in the US. Even on business trips, on particular routes.
If there’s a baggage porter who says things like “Yassuh”, though, it’s an old book.
Come to think of it, know what I have not seen in a while? Compound punctuation, like the semicolon dash, colon dash, comma-dash, stop-dash.
An example I just ran across; a sci-fi book where a character comments that there won’t be enough left of somebody for an autopsy to identify them (in this case due to being torn apart by a mob).
As opposed to a comment about how “they’ll need to use DNA testing” like you’d see nowadays.
The space pirates have slide rules.
Royal Mail is delivered twice a day.
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Angry beyond belief, our hero bellows “I said, good day, sir!” in a peevish tone.
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“Three shillings and sixpence! Why are your prices so high?”
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Uses the words: blunderbuss, sirrah, pantaloons, Etch-A-Sketch, daguerreotype
“Don’t be silly!”, he ejaculated angrily.
Or a newspaper
“Coming, mother,” Tom ejaculated.
I prefer, “There won’t be enough of them left to make a tissue sample,” but that will not work if the person was merely torn to pieces by an angry mob.
A minor character is identified as an oriental or a negro.
Or a Mohammedan or a Hindoo.
Girl sneaks into the sitting room to play forbidden 45s on the stereo.
Or a sexual deviant.
Or a Dacoit.
I was just going to mention a 1960 mystery in which a paper boy features.
Either old or ignorance, but some part of a crime mystery revolves around a revolver shooting six and only six rounds.
I know the Russian Nagant revolver has held seven rounds since the 1890s, but especially in the past 30-40 years five round and even eight round revolvers have become common place. So the hero “counting six shots” against someone using a revolver in order to get the jump on him or finding five bullet holes when the detective knows the bad guys used a six shot revolver.
It’s like all those jokes about the milkman being some kid’s real father. Somebody hearing those for the first time nowadays would probably get the adultery part but might ask what a milkman is.
Knowing how to use tables of logarithms is fine. Memorizing tables of logarithms is over the top.
Slide rules are much better than tables of logarithms.
Depends on whether what model of revolver is known. Sure just “revolver” doesn’t guarantee much but people familiar with the most common makes and models of revolver would know how many rounds they hold. E.G.: “Dirty” Harry Callahan’s Smith & Wesson Model 29 held six rounds.