Fiction cliches you hate

It surprises me that so many people go to creepy remote houses/villages/islands to get over or get through a terrible event in their life. Their child has gone missing/been murdered/kidnapped etc so they leave their semi in Watford and rent a derelict former orphanage (usually haunted) halfway up a mountain to get their heads round it all? So if the police/social workers/police support person/family/friends needs to pop over and fill them in/check something out or see how their managing, they have to be airlifted in (usually in the middle of the worst flood since records began).

I don't like heroines 'padding' along hallways and corridors....why can't they just walk?

I watched Life of Pi last night.

At the very end we see his wife and children, and there is no suggestion whatsoever that he went back to India to find the girl that he had a crush on when he was 15. Which is good, because the trope of "first true love" is bollocks.

Oh bugger it's in Chat!

We should do something about that.

Heleeeeeeeeen? Oliviiaaaaaaaaa? Someoooooooooooone?

I came to the limits of my patience with her a year ago and donated all the books I had of hers to the charity shop. I think she could have produced a few very good books rather than a dozen increasingly irritating ones.

Its very annoying when a writer's later books turn you off ever rereading their earlier ones (i.e. Jodi Picoult).

Re anita shreve, far less annnoying than that writing in the present tense thing she does. dreadful. couldn't read another.

I like crime fiction but cannot bear the mini, one-page chapters in italics that are supposed to be from the psycho's POV. So unbelievably clichéd.

His breathing grew shallow as he peered through the window at the young, slim woman undressing. She would be his finest prize. What would her insides look like?

Booooooring!

Bad research. Very specifically Anita Shreve in "The Pilot's Wife." : "The world exclusive broke the next day in "The Belfast Telegraph""

Yes, that's the type of paper the "Belfast Telegraph" is. It breaks world exclusives

Authors who feel the need to drop pointless and senseless "twists" into their books, because their books are renowned for having twists.

Jodi Picoult and Melissa Hill in particular.

Oh and 'collective' children, who are no more than props for the adult characters' tangled lovelives - so they have to hop out from between the sticky sheets and go and collect 'the children', or when the knock comes at the door from the plod/bailiff/axe murderer they have to make 'the children' hide...

First post of 2013 for me! What about heroines who love their children with all the heart no matter how wicked they are and just want to hold them in their arms even though they are serial killers...Jodie Picoult..as opposed to those of us who would cheerfully kill them if they leave the fridge door open ONE MORE TIME!!

Well by the end of the 3rd book, Lisbeth Salander's whole head and body had gone dark.

Neat trick.

I never liked "an ear piercing shriek" because I didn't know if it meant a shriek that goes right through you or the shriek you make when someone makes an earring hole in your ear.

Any cliche involving women's intuition, "she just knew she was pregnant, she just knew her time had come" having had a bleed during my first pregnancy and all my pregnancy symptoms disappeared and then I was late a few weeks later and eventually ascertained that no I hadn't had a miscarriage, but had just had a bleed and was still pregnant, and then having found false starts many times during labour, I realise that the idea of a woman "just knowing" is bullshit. Or it is for me anyway, I am a crap woman, I never seem to "just know" anything.

Re: Lisbeth Salander - I've only read the first book. She's the sort of character that people with certain mental illnesses are often portrayed as, I think.

Something else I've noticed in crime fiction, mainly - anyone who is fanatical about cleaning and related tasks is a potential murderer. Any person who was raised by a domineering older woman, preferably not their birth mother, is also a murderer. Yes, Ruth Rendell, I am looking at you.

TheSmallClanger, you should read The Cauldron by Colin Forbes. It is deeply, DEEPLY shit, but the whole plot centers around Henchman #1's being told by Arch-Villain to carefully destroy a piece of evidence but instead just throwing it in the bin. Then Our Plucky Heroes launch a raid against Evil HQ where they are beaten back with only time enoigh to grab a single piece of paper from the top of the bin...

Yes, but we all know that Roberth Lethbridge is actually more interested in getting the Earl sweaty and in his shirt sleeves than in Honoria. It's all an elaborate plot to be wounded so he can have his arm bandaged.

Tut - lurcher. Bloody autocorrect

Jilly Cooper also serial offender when it comes to anthropomorphising animals - thus the lurched that cried big fat tears which rolled down its cheeks and the racehorse that stopped to admire itself on the giant screen as it cantered past. Seriously?!

Ah, by your nn I can tell your'e a GH fan Horatia.
When I got my kindle, I bought all my old favourites again.
My favourite was Damarel in Venetia.
He was a bounder, no mistake.

Jilly Cooper is a repeat offender for the following: fat woman has unhappy marriage, finally gets arse in gear and loses weight via unhappiness diet (have tried this is RL and does not effing work), scales fall from husband's eyes when he sees wife is now thin and waif-like and stops philandering etc

Very annoying. She regularly spouts the whole "losing weight will solve your problems" mantra - or did in her Riders, Rivals, Polo phase

LadyBeagle today I have been perusing my audiobook copy of The Convenient Marriage and vastly enjoying Robert Lethbridge who is an unrepentant fight-picking, heroine-kidnapping Cad of the First Water.