Another one bites the dust

So I've decided to abandon my second book in a week; this time it's Mourn Not Your Dead by Deborah Crombie.

I'm sure many people enjoy this detective series but, for me, the style has proved too much.

I struggled with the poorly edited, repetitive grammar from the first page, though I decided to persevere.

I even got past my normal 10-page cut-off, but the over-elaborated descriptions began to wear me down.

I believe a crime novel can sustain an alter ego - in the Inspector Morse series there is humour in the exchanges between Morse and Lewis, and the peculiar habits of Morse - but here it takes the form of a first-name informality, employed amongst the characters (and the narrator) that undermines the credibility of the entire proposition.

A teenager with limited experience of gritty life might write this way: there's even the cliché of a young policeman throwing up at the sight of the first body.

My fault for trying to work my way through the pile of unread books I discovered when auditing my shelves - don't know how I acquired them. Evelyn Waugh is next in the heap - but he's on hold. I have The Maltese Falcon burning a hole in my rucksack. The dog could be in for a long walk this morning!