When did Mort actually go Full on Xavier?In Ghost Story, we get a description of Mort and his home. The thing is, although it matches up with many of the details that have been described in earlier books, it does it in a haphazard fashion that leaves some really odd gaps.
It was an odd home, for Chicago—a white stucco number with a red tile roof that looked like it had been transplanted from Southern California.
Mortimer Lindquist seemed to have finally given in to the inevitable. I’d seen him with a bad toupee, and with an even worse comb-over, but this was the first time I’d seen him sporting a full-on Charles Xavier. The unbroken shine of his pate looked a lot better than the partial coverage. He’d lost weight, too, since the last I’d seen him. I mean, he wasn’t going to be modeling for Abercrombie & Fitch or anything, but he’d definitely dropped from self-destructively obese down to merely stout.
Now here are the descriptions from Dead Beat:
Mortimer Linquist had done pretty well for himself over the past couple years, and he'd moved out of the little california-import stucco ranch house he'd been in the last time I'd gone to visit him. Now he was working out of a converted duplex in Bucktown.
He was short, twenty of thirty pounds overweight, and had given up trying to conceal his receding hairline in favor of shaving his scalp completely bald.
These differences are rather convoluted in how they mix and match the facts we knew about Mort, and what Harry knew about Mort before GS. Also keep in mind that Harry had to write down the
address to where he wanted to go at the beginning of GS, rather than just verbally saying "Take me to this person."
Finally, we have confirmation from a Beta that the Beta readers pointed out this discrepancy to Jim before it got to us. This doesn't rule out that a genuine mistake was made and still ended up going to publishing anyways, and it doesn't rule out the idea that it wasn't intentional, and will be
significant later either.
For now it looks suspiciously like a Discrepancy, and thus is noted here
This topic, started back when the sample chapters were being released for GS, is dedicated to this issue.