The run-on English sentence made the run-on English road

[flemmings]

Picked a Bernard Cornwell mystery off the curbside, possibly thinking he was some other author. But the blurb sounded good- 'The Countess of Avebury, once an opera dancer, was killed while having her portrait painted. The artist was convicted of her murder and is due to hang. But influences in high places brought Rider Sandman on the scene as an investigator for the government.' So far so good, and hot weather is mystery reading weather. The opening scenes, of a public hanging, are harrowing, even if the unsympathetic characters are all presented as grotesques. And then Sandman appears, walking back to London because he's pissed off at a thrown cricket match.

He walked because he refused to share a carriage with men who had accepted bribes to lose a match. He loved cricket, he was good at it, he had once, famously, scored a hundred and fourteen runs for an England eleven playing against the Marquis of Canfield's picked men and lovers of the game would travel many miles to see Captain Rider Sandman, late of His Majesty's 52nd Regiment of Foot, perform at the batting crease... He could not afford the stagecoach fare, nor even a common carrier's fare, because in his anger he had thrown his match fee back into Sir John Hart's face and that, Sandman conceded, had been a stupid thing to do for he had earned that money honestly, yet even so it had felt dirty.

Does no one hire editors any more? Are the colon and semicolon dead? I'm a subvocalizer, and I truly can't be having with writing like this. Back on the boulevard it goes.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

OHMYGOD it/he/they sound terrible ... yet ... uhmmm I enjoyed his Sharpe books, and I'm sure that the sentences in those were of a decent length ... although I must admit to being guilty of run-on sentences errrm ... looks up - yeah see. ^_^

Although I've not heard of this series of his books. Oh and Sharpe has a weakness for taking off his shirt ... at the drop of a hat. To rip it up into bandages, to require bandaging himself, oh it's hot, there's a water body he can freshen up at ... oh he's wading into a brawl and loses his shirt, oh he's been in a brawl requires bandaging ... you get the picture!

Still though enjoyable, I didn't have issue with too much of the grammar, though there were instances where I thought that something might have been slightly off but couldn't put a finger on it!

^__^ I have been curious about his other books but ehhh... never got into them.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Don't be mad at me if you think I have given away a spoiler, because as soon as the character-who-would-be-killer is introduced, you peg him. Why? Because apparently all good men are beautiful righteous creatures of the Lord, and the bad ones are weak and annoying. So when you are introduced to the weakest, most annoying snivelling creature of the lot, you know he's the murderer."- although this too, but he was better at being less obvious in this series maybe ...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The general run of nay-sayers at Goodreads agree that they love him for his naval battles and sea books and all that good Hornblower/ Aubrey stuff, and they could care less about Regency cricket players. From which I deduce he does well with action scenes but should leave the sleuthing to sleuths.

Also maybe the Sharpe series is from a different publisher, one that employs copy editors.