After the double DNF of June, I did very much want to enjoy Sandra Balzo's Dead Ends. One of my blind dates with a book, it promised a cozy mystery that would be maybe more interesting than the Pokemon brain the last book gave me.
That's when the Universe decided to remind me that interesting is often used in Chinese curses.
The book was either 1) not edited by anyone, 2) was not edited by a professional editor with an understanding of industry standards in regard to formatting, or 3) the author insisted on STETing the incorrectly formatted text and the frequent absence of other things like dialogue tags so you know who is speaking.
This lack of correct formatting and dropping of tags make the text basically unreadable. If you're not sure why, tell me who is speaking the third sentence on this page. Is it the character above the paragraph, or the character below (who is also unnamed because there is no dialogue tag there, either.)
I don't know what happened with this novel. If this was something the author insisted on, it seems like waaaaay more than just a literary flouncing of skirts at convention (and I read a book once in which the author used interruption marks so often every page looked like it had been hand-stitched by an inebriated quilter, so I have seen me some literary flouncing.)
As a pro I'm utterly baffled. If I ever turned in a manuscript like this to any of my publishers I would be looking at a contract cancellation and the unemployment line. Anyway, this one is another DNF.
Next up is Dear Old Dead by Jane Haddam, and I confess, I did peek at the first chapter to assure that was correctly formatted and didn't contain any references to cards. Thumbs up on both fronts -- bless you, Jane. :)
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