Crime on the Fens - Joy Ellis

This is my first Joy Ellis book. I have a few more in my TBR pile.

 

I'm enjoying the storyline - it's fresh and I can't see where it's going and it's avoiding being exploitative.

 

I quite like the two detectives, each with their "secret" pasts that they share with each other before the book is halfway through.

 

I can see that this would make good television. 

 

But where was Joy Ellis' editor? How could s/he let so much boiler-plate, cliché-ridden text through just to keep the story moving? Do we need to know that one of the policemen has steely-grey hair? Or that another "slips like a shadow across a wall" or have a description of a major character's interior dialogue that reads like stage directions?

 

I can see how all of these things might be there in a first draft as the writer fully imagines the action. That they made it to the final draft is disappointing. I'm hoping the next books are better.

 

It also doesn't help that the narrator of the audiobook can clearly see the pieces of flat prose and tries either to speed through them or give them an inflection-free delivery.

 

If you've read Joy Ellis, let me know, does it get better?