A Tell-Tale Sign of Bad Writing

(At least in my opinion.)

Quite frequently, buying a book I’ve never heard of, written by an author I had never heard of, is not a good idea.  Well, I ignored those lessons and took a chance on a “golden age” (in this case, it appears to be fool’s gold) mystery.  (Fortunately, I paid only $0.99 for it, so it at least cost me little, in financial terms, anyway.  

To be fair, this was the author's first mystery (of 7), and at least one of his later books was reasonably good.

The easiest way to express my difficulty with the book is to list, in order of their appearance, the surnames of the characters:

Venables (a journalist)
*Budge (Mrs.)
Brown (a servant)
*Budge (Mr.)
*Merritt
*Blossom
Salteron-Deeley
*Mumby
*Hectoring
*Geranium
*Sanctuary
*Blood
Eppoliki (this character was around for a while, but unnamed)
Evans
Walton
Cantrip
*Clout
(This is in the first 10% of the book…and we continue)
*Twing
Winterton
Noakes
Meredith
Bailey
*Bray (Scotland Yard D.I.)
*Chingley
*Cuff (
Barnard

I have placed an asterisk before the names that, well, raise the odd question or two.  I’m fully aware that too many Smiths and Joneses and so on is boring.  But the Mumby to Blood string was a bit much.  And D.I. Bray seems a bit precious, especially because he seems prone to braying.