Empty wagons
Sir: Alastair Forbes's review of A Lonely Business (25 April), although fundamentally boring, must have been fun for him to write because the book seems to have been stuffed with names that he knows. I might read the book just to see if names other than the names Alastair Forbes drops occur in the text.
Presumably he got the book to review on the grounds that he knows a lot of names, but surely there exists a writer who can write lucidly who also knows a lot of people? Mr Forbes's sentences are like very slow and very long goods trains and it seems to me the wagons are empty. It would be a kindness if the next book he gets to review should be set so far back in time that his faded photograph albums can contain no picture that would trigger him off again so intolerably.
John Francis 3 The Broadway, Portswood, Southampton
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