Title:
The body on the beach
By
Author: Kendra Yoder
Tag line: The
detective had to learn the victim’s identify before he could find the culprit!
Police characters: Detective Clarence
Melton
The gist: A female body is found on Gilligan’s beach,
the apparent victim of strangulation. The coroner estimated the time of death
to be the night before. The victim’s identity was not known. The woman who
found the body was out walking her dog.
She said she saw a blue sports car pulled off the road last night but
thought it was teenagers necking. She
did hear a shriek but thought again it was them goofing around. She got a partial license plate of TMJ. Very shortly the victim was identified as a
local woman from the next town over. The sheriff verified the dog walker’s
whereabouts and did not consider her a suspect.
The police department found two cars that matched the description and
had a partial tag of TMJ. The detective
told the first guy, a burly, tattooed bouncer, that a woman had been strangled
on Gilligan’s Beach. The man recognized
the woman’s photo as a customer at his bar.
When asked if he saw her yesterday at the bar, he claimed he was off
work yesterday and out with friends. The second suspect, a twitchy,
hollow-cheeked, watery-eyed man was shown a photo of the victim and told she
was murdered. He said he didn’t
recognize the woman and added he wasn’t anywhere near Gilligan’s beach.
Crime scene: Gilligan’s Beach
Clues: Only the perp knew where the killing took
place.
Suspects: The two
men with the partial plate of TMJ.
Red herrings: I
suppose the burly tattooed guy is a red herring. I mean as opposed to the little hollow skinny
twitchy dude.
Solution: The
second guy gave himself away when he said he hadn’t been anywhere near
Gilligan’s Beach, as the detective never mentioned where the murder had taken
place. The woman had refused his
advances so he murdered her.
My two cents: Yawn.
What a
coinkydink that two men in town have little blue sports cars with the same
partial plate.
Why the
sheriff is blabbing to everyone that the victim was strangled at the beach is
anyone’s guess. It’s a rookie mistake.
What kind of
crackpot murders a woman because she doesn’t want to have sex with him? And I don’t know why. He sounds wonderful. I’m thinking there’s a long
list of dead women in twitchy’s past.
I’m not sure
why we had to have an unknown victim to make this story work.
To like the
story, you have to like the characters.
The sheriff is not likeable. He
complains about the beach being a tourist trap, he sourly thinks the murder
must have something to do with alcohol, he sighs and winces, and is just
overall a tedious guy.
Two
stars. This story was dull, unexciting,
lackluster, and lifeless. Did I mention
it was dull?
2 comments:
The crime about this for me was that the victim, 'the 'lead' character, was never named. Poor woman had been snuffed out by Twitchy because she turned him down and yet, out of all the characters in the story, she didn't deserve to have a name. All the time it was 'this woman', or 'the victim'. Even after they'd identified her, all we got was that she was 'a local woman from the next town'. AND??? Her name was? Because we learned absolutely nothing about her, it meant she stayed completely anonymous and I couldn't really care about her one way or the other. I did wonder what the thinking was behind that.
The clue leapt out at me, too - unlike the cop, who had to leave the room before the penny dropped.
Ho hum. I think I've read this story before, with the location and the characters' names changed. Might even have been by the same author.
Post a Comment