Am almost at the end, only a few pages to go, of a yet to be published book (I have a proof copy and it’s hard to believe the number of typos in it) and I am not going to name either its author or its major publisher because my reaction is not exactly euphoric, quite the reverse in fact. It is a lengthy volume of almost five hundred pages and I was tempted to give up on page three. The writer is well known having written something like thirty books and his name is printed twice as large as the book’s title. He is a number one best selling author and, according to his publisher, the world’s greatest story teller so why was I tempted to give up by page three? Well it was here that our nineteen year old hero has it off with a recently widowed lady ten years, golly, yes, ten years his senior, who takes him to paradise! However, the good widow having been despatched by the moral majority of the period was unable to take him to paradise again and, having got over this scrap of truly awful writing, I decided to continue my read to discover the book is really a continuation of boys’ own literature, a ripping yarn after the manner of Henty and his like in the nineteenth century and the adventures of Biggles in the twentieth with modern naughty bits added, though I was pleased he didn’t fall into the trap of so many writers of today (like film makers) who use the f word with such diabolical frequency simply because, without censure, they can and it becomes a total bore. However this best-selling author and greatest of story tellers simply, as on page three, cannot write a love/sex scene without causing toe-curling embarrassment. A lady enters our hero’s life and they naturally fall in love and, from here on in, the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye and gets cornier and cornier. His descriptions of love scenes and especially the dialogue had me bursting into laughter they are so appalling and so false. I simply could not believe in this day and age someone could write dreadful crap like that and what is more that his publisher and his editors didn’t pick up on it. I may not be a world’s best selling author or the world’s greatest story teller but, quite candidly, if I wrote and then read back to myself shit like that I would hide my head in shame. Still, I am sure the book will sell millions and the author can laugh all the way to the bank, the publishers will be satisfied at having produced another block-buster and good writing will have suffered a major defeat.