Desdemona

I have called this virus 'Desdemona' because it blew in with Storm Dennis.
Still immobile, I've become an expert in spotting racism in crime novels.
I stopped reading Lynda la Plante ages ago, and Peter Robinson is next on the scrapheap.
It's so carefully nuanced, sometimes: yes, there will be cops from different cultural backgrounds, but the sneery references to shops with 'foreign names' and mosques at the end of the street are a dead giveaway. What a surprise to find that one of the key protagonists reads the Mail on Sunday and The Express, and yearns for the days of the News of the World!
This is really irritating, because I enjoy good plotting and good writing. Maybe I've been doing too much writing myself recently; you have to be so self-critical as an academic writer, and it makes you pull things to pieces as you write.