Authors critiquing books

Don't do it.

"For instance, Lovegrove demonstrates a strange tendency to slip in technically correct, but stylistically unsuitable, vocabulary into otherwise workmanlike prose - "steatopygous", "athwart", "besmirched" to mention a few words thus used, although it doesn't happen often enough to be a joke. And then, at one point, there is a startling moment when one of the characters, an ex-policeman, comments on the tendency of police officers to use " a florid, unnatural form of English" in their reports and has to stop himself doing it when he gets tired. Post-modern self-referential irony or not? It has to be - the rest of the technical aspects of the writing are too competent to allow it to be anything else. But whatever it is, it stands out like a quarterback's foot in your eye most of the time."

Shut up.