That is pretty bad. Maybe she rushed to meet a deadline.

I agree, it is pretty bad. To me it feels as if she was trying a bit too hard to be clever. I think if a sentence suddenly makes you aware that you are reading words on a page, and takes you away from visualizing the 'movie' of the story, then it is poorly written.

Kath, stoneangel has said it all! I have never read anything by EG so don't know if she is a 'clever' writer . . . plus starting a sentence with 'This' seems a basic mistake. If EG is English/Aus she could have said house/shack/cabin for 'domicile'. If US she would have got away with 'home', although you and I know this would have been the wrong meaning of the word. ;-)

Vee, EG is an American who writes English police procedurals. The DI is an earl, no less, but he is a rather nice chap, and the DS working with him is very likable too. She does pretty well in writing out of her own area, but lately her books have been about half as long again as they need to be.

Vee, George's books were adapted by the BBC into The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, which you may have seen or heard of. (That is quite a horrible sentence, but I will leave it!)

EG's sentence is certainly awkward, but I've read worse. I say that because at least its meaning is easy enough to figure out. Right now, I can't think of truly incomprehensible sentences I've run across in books by well-known writers, but I'm pretty sure Thomas Pynchon, for one, has written some doozies.

Vee, starting a sentence with 'This' is not grammatically or syntactically incorrect, BUT context is important, as the 'this-starting' sentence must refer to a preceding sentence that makes the meaning of 'this' readily apparent. I would like to know the sentence just before EG's awful one -- there has to be one. Kath, can you cite it for us?

The common American confusion of home/house annoys me, but substituting 'domicile' for one or the other reminds me of this advice: Don't use a fifty-cent word when only a one-cent word is needed.

I agree, it is an awkward sentence. I'm increasingly irritated at all the spelling errors I am finding in current books. (e.g. rein vs. reign, lie vs. lay, etc.) Have all the proof-readers been fired?

Our newspaper indicates that their proofreaders were fired, but I'm afraid most of it is due to the failure of our schools to teach grammar or spelling. On the travel forum I read, there once was a long discussion about saying "lay" on the beach rather than lie on it. The bottom line seemed to be that since that is what "everybody" says, that is what should be said. Sometimes I despair.

Frieda, I agree that there are many authors who write sentences that are incomprehensible - I've attempted Pynchon myself. But this is a who-dunnit, not an attempt at literary fiction, and I just found the sentence so awkward.

You are right about the 'this' being self explanatory. The preceding sentences were:

He didn't wish to walk into this covert investigation blind and as things turned out, there was a fair amount of information available on Fairclough, who had not been born Bernard Fairclough at all but rather Bernie Dexter of Barrow-in-Furness. His initial appearance on earth took place at home, in a two-up and two-down terrace house in Blake Street.

I think the first sentence of this paragraph could be better written too, and I think most British would say 'two-up, two-down' without the 'and'. Correct me if I'm wrong, Vee.

Kath, yes two up two down is the 'normal' way of saying it. For RP'ers not familiar with UK primitive living considtions it refers to a very small house where the donwstairs rooms consisted of a 'front room' or palour only used for high days, holidays and funerals and a kitchen cum 'living room'. Upstairs would have had two bedrooms. There would have been no bathroom or indoor WC and possibly only a cold tap either in the kitchen or yard. Still thousands of them throughout the UK about despite 'slum clearance' in the 60's & 70's. Many people (with benefit of modern plumbing) say they prefer this type of accommodation to soulless 'new-build' housing.

Mary, English folk seem equally confused by lay and lie.

Siobhan, the Inspector Lynley TV series has been quite popular over here, although personally I don't watch many 'whodunnits'.

Stoneangel - Love your definition of a bad sentence - takes you out of the "movie" of the story!

Kath, thanks for providing EG's sentences preceding the contorted one. You're right: the first sentence could have been improved. Pithiness, apparently, is not Ms G's strong suit.

A good copy editor is a boon for any writer. A lousy 'ce' is worse than no editor at all. That's my personal opinion, of course, but I've always been grateful to the sub-editors (in the UK) and the copy editors (in the US) who 'cleaned up' my work. A writer who depends on self-editing is bound to slip up. I'm always surprised when a writer tells me that s/he didn't have a copy editor, only a proofreader. Are copy editors endangered species?

EG's Americanism of 'two-up and two-down' is something a good 'ce' would have caught. We Americans do like our and, including the various ways to abbreviate it (with the ampersand in mac & cheese; 'n' as in The Chat 'n' Chew Cafe).

Kath, I think any author who chooses a setting out of her own area is very bold -- probably audacious -- because the locals of the place will invariably point out all the errors but will seldom acknowledge the things the writer got right. It's human nature, I suppose. I know it happens to me as a reader: A few years ago the Booker Prize went to a writer who was trying to depict the lives of Latinos in the American Southwest. After about three pages, it was obvious to me that the writer had either never been to West Texas and New Mexico or he had flown in and flown out and considered that experience enough.