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- The killing of pets. Yes, it is sentimental but I don't like it when the pet dog or cat gets killed. It does seem to get ever more popular as part of the plot. Almost no current thriller seems to be without a pet killing.
- The incompetent treatment of the German language in English books. Many authors like to insert some German expression or a German sentence to either show off their erudite education or to create an authentic atmosphere, e.g. in war time thrillers. Well, you can take it for granted that at least 50% of these attempts contain a glaring spelling or grammatical mistake.
This might still be acceptable if it only happened with low volume editions published by small publishing companies but it also happens with large publishers like Penguin.
A recent example: Martin Amis in his recent bestseller "The Pregnant Widow" talks about "Der Wirtschaftswunder". No, Mr. Amis, wrong gender, as any child of six could have told you it's "Das Wirtschaftswunder". As the whole novel is just one exercise in showing off intellectually glaring mistakes like this obviously spoil the effect. I don't even want to think about the botch job he has probably made with all his references to ancient Greek.
As German is spoken by more than 90 million native speakers a publisher should be able to spend 50 quid on having a couple of German terms proofread.
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