John Grisham’s need to put a twist ending at the end of a book. In the Testament (or the Summons? It’s hard to keep them straight. The one where the 2 brothers’ judge dad dies), the twist ending was stupid. In The Partner (lawyer fakes his own death and steals a lot of money) the twist ending was stupid and unnecessary. If you haven’t read it yet, first tear out the last page, then read it.
I suspect Patricia Cornwell is taking kick-backs from companys that make luxury items. Everything is referred to as its brand name.
“Scarpetta tucked her Mont Blanc into the breast pocket of her Donna Karin, and glanced nervously at the Brietling Lucy had bought her before dashing out to her Mercedes.”
It has gotten progressivly worse (as have her books) over the years, and now it just makes me want to “claw my eyes out” 
S. Morgenstern went into WAY too much detail about the trees and the royalty school. I mean, come on, tell us about it, yeah…but 60 pages!!! Give us a break!
Cornwell is nothing compared to Fay Weldon’s product placement deal.
No, actually Chrichton has NO original ideas, he merely warms over ideas that were introduced to genre science fiction decades ago. What he has is marketing ability. That’s it.
Steven Brust writes some of his books (Five Hundred Years After, The Phoenix Guard and his newest) in the persona of a historian and uses this kind of dense, overlapping “oh, so urbane” stlye that just drives me crazy. It goes like this:
“I am a messenger from far away.”
“How so? Far away?”
“I am sent to deliver a message to you.”
“How so? To me?”
“Yes.”
“Have you a message to give to me?”
“I say I have.”
“Then will you not give to me this message?”
“But I have for an hour tried to do nothing else.”
And this is almost every conversation with every character! Brust also goes into long discussions about how a history would or would not include this or that information, but this is historical fiction (from the point of view of the supposed author and audience) so it can be included, or left out or speculated on, etc. Great story, but you have to fight your way through it.
Ruth Rendell’s characters inevitably wear “fawn jumpers,” which is pretty funny to an American.
G.R.R. Martin has a little repertoire of terms he uses to create an archaic feeling in his fantasy novels. You get used to “Ser” instead of “Sir,” but his use of “mislike” instead of “dislike” drives me crazy. I really mislike “mislike.”
I gave up on Robin Cook after the third or fourth major female character who seemed to be too much of an airhead to hold her supposedly intellectually demanding job:
“Ooh! This sinister situation is just so frustrating! But I AM an Egyptologist, and I’ll just have to figure something out!” <stamps foot, blows unruly curl off forehead>
I assumed that this was a tribute to the styling of Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers. Still annoying though.
I’ve been reading Poul Anderson’s The Shield of Time, and his need to recapitulate expository information is beginning to get on my nerves. Yes, the reader needs to know the rules about what the Time Patrol is and is not allowed to do, and yes, it’s good that you explain why the rules are important. But give us some credit for an attention span that allows us to get the information ONCE, then trust us to remember it later in the book.
Honestly, it reads like he compiled the novel from a slew of individual stories previously published in Analog.
Hmmm, maybe he did.
In a Mercedes Lackey novel, a character can feel “a lump in their stomach” (?) three or four times in the same scene. And is there ever anybody whose face isn’t described as a “mask”?
In Harry Turtledove’s Darkness series, every character from every country speaks with a Scottish accent, and half the book is spent describing clothing and food. What makes it especially irritating is that within a particular country everybody dresses the same and eats exactly the same things. How many tunics can the guy describe, anyway?
Ironically, I just read this book, and while I found it amusing and appropriate for the most part, it was carried a little too far sometimes. However, I was reading a library copy and apparently someone else had found it too much. Throughout both of the books some unknown past reader had felt the need to write in comments in the sidelines: “JESUS!” “GET TO THE DAMN POINT!” etc. In one of the Vlad books someone (the same person?) wrote something along the lines of “THIS BOOK SHOULD BE BURNED.” I think this was after he had assassinated someone, so perhaps they felt a moral frusteration, I don’t know. Absolutely no excuse for defacing a library book, though. The bastard. PLUS these comments were in both of the books, so it couldn’t have been so bad he stopped reading them.
As for my own pet peeves…
Lindsay Davis, the author of the Falco historical mysteries set in Rome, feels the need to use about 50 exclamation marks per page, all in her dialog.
“What a fine day!”
“Oh, definitely!”
“I’m feeling a bit sick to my stomache today!”
“That’s very unfortunate, my mother has a special potion for that!”
Grr.
Harry Harrison also appears not to have had an editor for his Stainless Steel Rat books. At all. For any of the series. I’ve read most of them, in various formats and so on, and they ALL have these little mistakes that drive me insane. I can’t really recall the exact circumstances, and I cant’ find any of my copies, but I’m sure anyone who has read his books knows what I’m talking about.
Another of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, has a merciless tendency for using ellipses, especially when her characters are ruminating on words of wisdom, giving advice, et cetera. She’s a great writer, but it bugs me.
Laurel Hamilton has plenty of flaws, but the one that gets on my nerves is her consistent misspelling of “all right” as “alright.”
As much as I like David Eddings’ books, I hate the way the female characters treat the male characters, especially in the Belgariad. Apparently, no man is capable of independent thought or action without the help of a woman, no matter what her age may be. ‘Oh dear, whatever would happen to these men if we women weren’t around to keep them in line?’ Their condescension and general contempt gets very annoying.
I cringe every time Christine Feehan uses the phrase “I can do no other” in her books. I got the point she was trying to make the first time I read it, but no, she has to pound it into the ground.
Not to mention"rapers" instead of “rapists”
i missed the Atvar and the knight opening when he dropped it in the last two books. Part of Turtledove’s repeatition is he has so many characters, and he has to reintroduce them so people will remember. I was annoyed at first during the Worldwar series, since i read them all in 2 weeks, but when i had to start waiting for books of his, the intros helped me keep track of who was who. It is even worse in the GreatWar/American Empire series, they have way more characters. At least he is killing some off so it gets easier, but now all the kids are growing up and you know they will be fighting in the Blitzkreig battles in Kentucky and what not. some of his stuff does get annoying, and the sex scenes are way to freaky.
That’s what Spider Robinson does in the Callahan books. It almost ruins the series for me.
Mary Higgins Clark has some sort of unnatural attraction to the word “incongruous.” Hey, I like that word as much as the next guy, but after it has already been used a dozen times, it’s not possible to remain immersed in the book when you read it again. In fact, she’s ruined that word for me forever - if I come across it while reading any book, it’s like when Christopher Reeve found that penny in his pocket in Somewhere In Time.
Guy Gavriel Kay. I love his books, but he’s just a bit too fond of sentences like the following: “Years later he would reflect on how much different the course of history would have been, had he acted slightly differently in this moment. But for now he knew nothing of the great consequences of his actions.”
As far as I can tell every single book of his contains a passage to that effect, somewhere. It’s a jarring, trite addition to an otherwise fine body of work.
thi6: I so agree with you about Eddings.
I have just spent the last month and a half rereading Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. AND I AM SO DAMNED SICK OF THE STORY IN A STORY PLOTTING I COULD SCREAM!!!
Oh yeah and nonpareil…
and the constant references to Botticelli painting…
umm yes maam you like him well so do I but I CAN describe someone with having to reference Sandro again and again…