How to Write Killer Prose (9)

Snob!

If you watch the average British TV drama you'd be forgiven for thinking that class no longer existed. That we've all been compressed into a monocultural middle-class world in which men have business meetings in modular offices, call their sons 'mate', and sprawl on sofas watching football, while women (often criminologists of some kind) wear ironed knitwear, call their professional colleagues 'mate', and hang out in pine kitchens.

If there's a villain it's always the well-off guy who lives in the terraced house with the chequered floor tiles in the hall. He's always having an affair with a younger woman which he will describe to his wife as meaningless, and the wife will always react by flinching and saying 'don't touch me'. Although this couple has a slightly worse marriage than the criminologist and her boring husband, they have a nicer kitchen, with copper skillets hanging from rails (invariably a signifier of corruption).