Surely, there's more to writing a book than simply having a good idea?

This book is based on a good idea, but it reads like it was written by a computer programme and commissioned by that bloke in Marketing who seems to have a new car every other month.

It's so damn clunky. The sentences are twistier than a twisty thing, the narrative structure was arrived at using one of those foldy-paper-fingers-things and the jokes were designed by the same committee that came up with the camel. And Fforde must have been slapped, ironically, with the Adverb Stick when he was a baby.

Whatever happened to editors? Is Jasper Fforde now so successful that like, say, Stephen King, no-one dare tell him to hold on a minute? Or has the BBC Newsroom's evil plot finally succeeded, and they've all been banished to Out-of-Date Camp?

Of course, what do I know? I've never flogged a half-decent idea to within an inch of its functional credibility, nor approached the lower part of a wooden storage device with a spatula. But I do know the difference between a Concept and a Book.

Could the angry mob please now form an orderly queue...