Hard boiled private eye. "Back before the world ended" to me means before covid. I thought here you'd have something supernatural.
Yes, I knew "Patsy" was going to be Patsy Cline. Husband's a fan. I'm not, but she's okay.
You're leaving the relationship between narrator and Ani deliberately vague. Her being gone hurts his heart, but she's "just a friend." Maybe she's not a love interest, but she's clearly more than "just" a friend.
The voice of the hard-boiled detective is perfect. You've nailed the comments like "Social niceties are most important when you're not being social." They don't just give atmosphere, they give character.
Little clues about loyalty and wanting to do the right thing add some real tension about that file. And I liked the way you set up and used "Mr. Gray" as a marker for "this is really dangerous."
I hate that Charles had to pick the lesser of two evils again. What an awful situation: "corrupt and loyal" vs "pure and traitorous". You had me wondering if Charles would actually betray Ani to avoid doing something illegal, that would possibly be even worse for other people than whatever would happen to Ani.
You set up the tension well. The stakes seemed to be raised higher and higher, and now I want to know what's in that file. And I don't want Charles to be further compromised. I was more interested in Ani at the beginning than by the end. By the end, I was most interested in Charles, then Madam, then the old man in the golf shirt.
The detail about getting into the house was somewhat interesting. I'm beginning to realize that I have a lot of trouble picturing the inside floorplan. I had the same trouble with your other stories, but since this one is a whodunit, I worked harder at keeping it straight. It's probably me -- maybe I'm too used to seeing maps all the time?
Which is fascinating, since I don't have any trouble with your descriptions of indoor or outdoor objects or scenery -- which normally is difficult for me. I usually just skip descriptions of scenery or details in stories. The problem I'm having here is the spatial relationship of objects. Hmm.
Hard boiled private eye. "Back before the world ended" to me means before covid. I thought here you'd have something supernatural.
Yes, I knew "Patsy" was going to be Patsy Cline. Husband's a fan. I'm not, but she's okay.
You're leaving the relationship between narrator and Ani deliberately vague. Her being gone hurts his heart, but she's "just a friend." Maybe she's not a love interest, but she's clearly more than "just" a friend.
The voice of the hard-boiled detective is perfect. You've nailed the comments like "Social niceties are most important when you're not being social." They don't just give atmosphere, they give character.
Little clues about loyalty and wanting to do the right thing add some real tension about that file. And I liked the way you set up and used "Mr. Gray" as a marker for "this is really dangerous."
I hate that Charles had to pick the lesser of two evils again. What an awful situation: "corrupt and loyal" vs "pure and traitorous". You had me wondering if Charles would actually betray Ani to avoid doing something illegal, that would possibly be even worse for other people than whatever would happen to Ani.
You set up the tension well. The stakes seemed to be raised higher and higher, and now I want to know what's in that file. And I don't want Charles to be further compromised. I was more interested in Ani at the beginning than by the end. By the end, I was most interested in Charles, then Madam, then the old man in the golf shirt.
The detail about getting into the house was somewhat interesting. I'm beginning to realize that I have a lot of trouble picturing the inside floorplan. I had the same trouble with your other stories, but since this one is a whodunit, I worked harder at keeping it straight. It's probably me -- maybe I'm too used to seeing maps all the time?
Which is fascinating, since I don't have any trouble with your descriptions of indoor or outdoor objects or scenery -- which normally is difficult for me. I usually just skip descriptions of scenery or details in stories. The problem I'm having here is the spatial relationship of objects. Hmm.
Charles is now in a half written/two-thirds written novel. It won't answer what is in the file but might give a clue about those who want it.
And his choices about loyalty should be...interesting.