Leon Uris

In the immediate post-War period he churned out a number of dreary bestsellers, each fixated on Making an Important Statement about a Key Event of Our Times, blah blah blah. Most of them are very badly written indeed: the Uris oeuvre is definitely recommended to aspiring writers who need reassurance that even their humble efforts can, with luck, get published. If you must read one, QB VII is probably your best bet, a courtroom thriller that (unusually for Uris) actually manages to kick up a head of steam. It suffers, though, from a profound sense of egomania (Uris clearly overidentifies with the author protagonist) and an uncomfortable fascination with atrocity details that borders, to my mind, on pornography.

Poking around Amazon, I see that somebody's going to reissue Exodus as a "Modern Classic". Please God, no.