I found this story of yours via the action/adventure newsletter. I loved the idea for this story, heck for this vacation spot – what a cool place to go for a vacation! You covered the bases I would have wondered about had they not been mentioned – medical, law enforcement, etc. The characters were believable and I liked their interaction. The plot was excellent and I liked how you even included a false suspect – I was fairly certain he wasn’t the murderer, but not absolutely sure until the end.
I’ve seen that you are published, you must be so proud! I’m reluctant to nitpick someone whose already accomplished so much but there were some things I noticed which you might want to know about.
In the third paragraph there’s a repetition of the phrase “her arms around”.
“With a sigh, Mona dropped onto the sofa beside her friend.
There are two different spellings for “Hurberts” when he is first introduced.
“As she mounted the stairs and found her room where the crewman was just leavingleft, she smiled.”
I was confused by the French windows vs. doors. My naiveté may be showing, do they call them by both names? I’ve only heard the French doors version.
There was something incongruous about Mona wearing a cameo broach with a Grecian-style gown. The two styles didn’t seem to go together and Mona seems like a savvy woman, who wouldn’t clash styles without good reason. If the cameo belonged to her mother, she might wear it with anything. Just a thought.
There’s a bit of dialogue which confuses me. Brad and Mona are sitting together at dinner. Mona is listening to him speak with the guest on his other side. “As he listened to Mrs. Higgins, she couldn’t help hearing a few words of their conversations.” Then she asks, “Has Mrs. Rice said one thing that wasn’t negative?” – Is this a different guest?
In Tammy’s description of the detective and his wife, the word “really” is used twice in the same sentence. This may be Tammy’s manner of speech, but in case it isn’t, I thought I’d let you know.
“With one smooth, almost soundless move, Brad left his seat and tackled the butler, latching with a death-like grip onto his wrist above the knife.” – I moved a comma and flip-flopped some of the words toward the end of this sentence. It didn’t flow well to me.
Those were the main, substantive things I saw which I thought you might want to know about. I noticed other, minor things which I won’t detail. Some misspellings which wouldn’t be caught by a spell check: types for tapes, listen when it should have been listened, those sorts of problems. There were two places where I would have changed the word you used, in one case you used the word “set” when I felt it should have been “sat” due to the context. Interestingly, the other instance was the use of the word “sat” when I thought “set” would have been more appropriate. I also noted a few places where a hyphen would be necessary or where one word was written as two – for example, I think “redhead” is one word, rather than two.
I enjoyed “meeting” Mona, she had a strong personality and though she was obviously in some distress, she didn’t dissolve into hysterics and self-pity. An excellent example of a heroine! Thanks for sharing her story.
Lori
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