And the bad taste award goes to…

Fiona (who also provides some incisive commentary on the Dagger nomination lists) gets into a snit about the new James Patterson novel. And not for the usual reasons, either, but because of the UK cover:

A mother holding a crying, obviously very distressed baby? A recogniseable landmark (London’s millennium bridge, which doesn’t even feature in the book) being blown up? Frankly, I am horrified. There’s such a thing as going too far, and Headline have gone it. I know that many covers are emotionally exploitative to a degree, but I was disgusted by this. I am possibly (probably) overreacting just a little, but I really don’t care. There are some bridges which should not be crossed in order to simply sell a book – a book which also exploits the current world situation as well. Quite frankly, this is not what the world needs to be seeing. It certainly doesn’t need its current weakness, a slightly paranoid fear of terrorism, exploited and taken advantage of by writers and publishers in order to line their own pockets. If this were a better book, if it actually aimed to say something about issues, that would almost forgive some of the content of the book (although, frankly, for me nothing can justify that cover).

For direct comparison, let’s examine the US cover vs. the UK cover after the jump.

The US cover’s rather refined and classy looking with the vintage car. The UK cover, on the other hand, well, Fiona sure described it well enough:

Talk about different ways of marketing…to say the least. And I’m not a big fan of crying babies juxtaposed with burning bridges. So which focus groups approved this? I am incredibly curious.