Friday, August 14, 2015

Appearing in issue #32, August 10, 2015


Title:  Crime ring

By Author:  Patrick Scaffetti

 Tag line:    Linda wasn’t exactly sure who had stolen the diamond ring but she was leaning toward one suspect…

Police characters:   None.

The gist:    We’re at Whispering Breeze senior condominiums.  Linda, who likes to do crossword puzzles and fancies herself a mystery solver, is at the pool.  Also in the pool is Simon, a guy who fancies himself a ladies’ man.  There is Lillian who is sitting with Harold, and also Helen who is sitting across from them.  Lillian had been nicknamed Diamond Lil because she liked to wear lots of expensive jewelry.  Harold was known to favor the blackjack table.  Helen was known to be jealous of Lil’s jewelry and often made catty remarks about her.  Also at the pool was Chester, a man with a reputation for filing false insurance claims. Chester was limping from a recent suspicious fall.  His left leg was allegedly injured.

All seemed calm at the pool… until Lil cried out that her diamond ring was missing.  Simon started looking in the water for the ring.  Harold said he had to leave to go gambling. Helen speculated that Lil didn’t really lose the ring, that she just wanted the attention.  Chester said it was time for his medication and left the pool area leaning on his left leg.

Linda said she knew who had taken the ring.

Crime scene:   The pool area at the senior condos.

Clues:    Chester’s limp.

Suspects:   Harold the gambler, Chester the cheater, or Helen the coveter.

Red herrings:    Harold liked to gamble.  Helen was jealous of Lil’s jewels.

Solution:   There was a column long explanation about how Chester stepped on the ring in the pool and clenched it between his toes and tried to walk off with it but it was in the wrong foot from the leg he had injured and Linda saw him limping on the wrong leg.

My two cents:   Good grief.  Did the man never hear of bending over in the water and taking the ring out of his clenched toes and slipping it into his bathing suit?  Into his cheek? Or just palming it?  What a dumb story.   Too many characters introduced all at once.  The entire first column talked about Linda and how she liked to do crosswords and how she liked to solve mysteries and how long she lived at the condos and how she knew all the neighbors….yada yada yada.  Get on with it already.

Then we get a plethora of old people at the pool with very little background or even any details of real interest.  We’ve got Linda.  Well, she didn’t do it because she’s the ‘sleuth’ here.  We’ve got Simon, who thinks he’s a ladies’ man.  That doesn’t shout thief.  Then we’ve got Lil and Harold.  I supposed he could steal from her.  He certainly made a quick getaway and didn’t stop to help her look even for a minute.  Some boyfriend.  Then we’ve got Helen, who was jealous of Lil’s jewelry. The author never did say why.  There’s no depth to these characters.  Finally we have Chester, a man known to pull a fast one.

Clue:  Chester’s limp.

Motive:  None specifically written into the story. Was it greed or did Chester just like to take advantage?

Police Work:  None.

Writing:   It was a bit convoluted with too many characters.  Linda got the most attention but the others were rushed.  I can see why.  With six people in the story it’s hard to give us a nice feel for the characters.  The solution was not believable.  Imagine an old man with a diamond ring clutched in his toes trying to walk out of the pool area?  Ridiculous.

Characters:  Wooden.  Too many.

15 comments:

Mary Jo said...

I thought you would probably have a ripping good time with this one, Jody. I appreciate that the author tried to give us something a little different from the usual WW setup. However, any time you have to give a long winded explanation of what the story is all about, I am afraid you have a loser. I'm sorry, but the toes gripping a ring is the most ridiculous story ploy he could have come up with.

Chris said...

I actually liked the story's set up. The pool and the community of people who know each other well allows for insights that you wouldn't get with a group of strangers, so the background info was fine by me. I just wish there'd been one less character to get to grips with. It felt like information overload at the start. The words saved could've been used to provide a red herring, or false trail somehow. And I did think that the old man clutching the ring between his toes was a non-starter. A younger person could have wormed it onto a toe perhaps, but a 'lame' old man gripping it this way and walking away, no, not possible.

I almost don't feel we can comment on the length of the solutions any more, as we have been told by several people that it's not how they wrote it. Could be the same here. I wonder if this is the same Patrick that has dropped by a couple of times recently. If so, maybe he can tell us...

No star rating this time, Jody. Are you changing your method of review?

Tamara said...

Good catch, Chris--the absence of star rating. Maybe one of us could use that clue in a story. Noticing that the men seem to have these quaint characters.

Jody E. Lebel said...

@ Mary Jo. I didn't hate it enough to rip it apart. It was something a bit different but it just didn't work well. I'm with you about the long-winded explanations. I know WW uses them...but they are the mark of an amateur writer to me. Make the story work and you don't have to explain yourself at the end.

Yeah, that ring 'clutched' in the toe thing. Has the author ever met an old man? hahaha

Jody E. Lebel said...

@ Chris It was an information dump, wasn't it? The author did give us a few red herrings but they were hard to find with all the information being thrown at us. (One woman was jealous of the jewelry and one guy was a gambler.)

Jody E. Lebel said...

@ Tamara and Chris. This story didn't get any stars... I just didn't have the strength at the end or reading it to type in NO STARS!

Mary Jo said...

Jody, it may be that the writer does not include a long "solution", but when the editors get hold of the story, they may feel that it requires a long explanation to make any sense of the story. Either way, though, I am afraid it would be a loser.

Bettye Griffin said...

I didn't care for this story and didn't think you would, either...

Joyce Ackley said...

I couldn't imagine an old man being able to grip a diamond ring with his toes and walk out of the pool with it. Wow. Crazy.

Jody E. Lebel said...

@ Bettye. And yet I didn't rip the author a new one. I must not have had my 'crabby flakes' for breakfast that day. Maybe I'm losing it? I'll have to double up and murder the next guy. :)

Jody E. Lebel said...

@ Joyce I can't imagine ANYONE doing that. Maybe a monkey.

Elizabeth said...

Well I wasn't impressed with the story either, but on the plus side, it had an 87-year-old lady taking command of the situation and correctly solving the crime! On the minus side, this story had two supposedly unrelated characters with the same last name, which is sloppy writing in a one-page story.

Mary Jo said...

Oh, that's right, Harold and Chester weren't brothers, were they? The same name, I would venture, did not come from sloppy writing on the author's part. The editor may have been in a hurry and just slipped up. We may never know. I did like the setting of the story and the characters, but the clue and the solution were way out there in left field.

However, I don't see the WW editors buying any of my mystery stories.

Kris said...

Jody, I just read your critique of a story I wrote with someone else. It was about my mystery where the policewoman solves the crime at the nail salon. First of all, THIS IS FICTION. Of course the manicurist could have written a note asking for help but then the readers wouldn't have anything to solve. And, I certainly don't appreciate you writing the term "wtf"; apparently you aren't a lady. And, last of all, why do you set yourself up as an expert when you haven't sold a mystery story to this magazine? The mysteries are sometimes believable, sometimes not. Yes, sometimes they are silly. But the readers are trying to solve a puzzle. It's not a police procedural. Take a step back and see that you aren't the expert you'd like to be!

Jody E. Lebel said...

Authors who don't take criticism well amuse me. A person doesn't have to be an auto mechanic to understand how an engine runs. Movie critics write good/bad reviews every week... yet they've never made a movie. That my mysteries have not made it past Johnene doesn't mean I don't know how a good story should be put together. To say you put in a dumb clue because the 'readers wouldn't have anything to solve' is pretty lame. How about you write a clever, brilliant, thought-provoking, interesting, workable clue? Yes, the mysteries are sometimes believable and sometimes not, and in MY blog I slam the ones that are not. Even FICTION has to make sense. If I wasn't a lady I would have just said what the fuck. Take your lumps like a professional. You don't hear big-time authors whining about a bad review and making personal remarks about the critic. Grow up and grow a pair.