Fiction cliches you hate

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I read mostly crime and thriller.
Can't bear books that take the first hundred pages to describe the landscape. Thick frost, frozen lake, snowy trees, onto the action please.
Detectives that drink lots of coffee and work all night but somehow seem to actually work very little

In chick lit when they have the impromptu sex scene. Why does she never have her period? Never ever ever. Surely that can't be possible.

AlexReids still snortling at your post

shouty openings (crime) where the heroine (usually) is tied up and blindfolded in a dark scary place waiting to be murdered and then you have to read another six chapters of backstory before she miraculously notices a draught on her left elbow and scrapes off her manacles and crawls down secret escape hatch into a pine forest

oh, and she is feisty

sundaywriter and does her hair still look good although a bit mucky from the dungeon?

Oh yes, there's never a period, action is always possible.

yay that's the one (high fives bunty)
it may well be a shock of hair, that she has to keep brushing back impatiently - though never a widow's peak

Oh yes, impatiently. She doesn't know how good it looks, obviously.

Its a hair thing. Why do heroines always have big hair that needs 'taming'? Never dull mousey bob.

is a sign of their feist

One of my very very favourite authors (sadly now extinct) had the bestest descriptions:

Heroines hair "like oxblood" and eyes like "pond jelly". Absolutely loved her books.

WTF pond jelly? You mean shy yellow eyes speckled like a pear?

No!

Very pale almost colourless - like frog spawn. That's why I loved that author.

Her descriptions stopped you in your tracks.

go on, salmo - who was it? I'd read her!

Oh you mean gooseberry eyes.

She described mail aids face leaning against the side of a cow "like a coin on Byzantine velvet"

I'm paraphrasing a bit but that's the gist.

Therefore my eyes are sludgy green. Can I have alabaster skin too, and full coral lips please.

milk maids face ffs

mail...aids face?

Dorothy Dunnett.

The Lymond Series or Niccolo Series.

Or King Hereafter.

Absolutely stinking historical novelist, but needs concentration. I keep rereading her books and still find something new.

But she is a bit marmite - I know many who love her but you need to get into it.

Her research was utterly awesome.

milk maids face Stairs .
Blame the iPad!

stonking. NOT stinking.

She was a lovely writer. I adore her books.

thanks, I'll have a decko on amazon, is always good to find a new author

I think the Brodys were supposed to have met at school if you ignore the age gap between the actors so if there were at of Nicks she could feasibly have known him as Brody.

I have been assured that "feisty" comes from the same root as "fart" and always enjoy that image when a heroine is described as feisty.