Perhaps my favourite St Nicholas present this year (ok, I also got the latest Asterix and Obelix comic, as well as the first ever Jane Austen graphic novel and lovely house socks, so hard to choose actually) was Richard Osman’s latest Thursday Murder Club novel! I’m a huge fan, so I read The Impossible Fortune straight away, not planning to use a pencil as I went through it. But sure enough, I found two usage issues, lay for lie in a crucial text message (I have to lay low for a while, p. 330, a repetition of the same message earlier in the book) and a whom for who when Joyce picks up the phone (whom is calling, please?, p. 357). As well as a comment on grammar, on the use of a flat adverb:

“Doesn’t he talk nice?” says Davey.

Ibrahim agrees. With the sentiment, if not the grammar (p. 370).

(Don’t want to explain who the characters are, though every fan will of course recognise Ibrahim. But the usage issue fits the speaker, that much I can say.) The whom for who example I found a bit over the top to be honest, and checking the sentence in Google n-gram produced virtually no instances in British English for the last couple of years (more for AmE though, and increasing …). But the who/whom issue is one Richard made use of before, as I discussed earlier on in this blog.

Perhaps though you don’t agree with me! And because I’m curious, please let me know by filling out this mini-poll.