The rewards of pique …

… Lost for Words — The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The characters, who are really types, on display in Lost for Words will be instantly and deliciously recognizable to anyone who hates terrible writing and its enablers. Among the judges the most awful are surely Jo Cross, a "columnist and media personality" whose "ruling passion was 'relevance,' " and Penny Feathers of the Foreign Office, who composes her own vapid thrillers with the help of a program called Ghost: "When you typed in a word, 'refugee' for instance, several useful suggestions popped up: 'clutching a pathetic bundle,' or 'eyes big with hunger'; for 'assassin' you got 'ice water running through his veins' . . ."