A sudden death ends a promising career and leads Margaret Sykes, a young and as yet inexperienced detective, on her first case: a confusing search for the truth.
A sudden death ends a promising career and leads Margaret Sykes, a young and as yet inexperienced detective, on her first case: a confusing search for the truth.
Nicely done story, James. I don't normally read murder mysteries, but I found this one captured me. I didn't see any of the major revelations coming (admittedly, I am a bit of a murder-mystery neophyte). Also, I really liked the careful, yet matter-of-fact handling of sensitive topics. That was very well done.
ReplyDeleteSomething about the way it was written puzzled me for quite a while as I was reading it. I finally realised what it was: it's written almost like a screenplay. It would be extremely easy to turn into a screenplay because of that. If you ever want to do so I can point you to the OpenOffice/LibreOffice template that makes it relatively easy to write a screenplay. Or I can give you the little bit of css code I wrote to format it as a screenplay if you want to write it as HTML.
Thanks Miriam, I really appreciate the feedback. I surprised myself, as I rarely read murder mysteries, but the ideas behind this one had been simmering away for years. I'm pleased my handling of sensitive topics was ok, as I've always empathised with minority groups - something that seems common among us atheists. The second Margaret Sykes story is more science fiction than mystery, so it bridges the gap. It also gave me a chance to get up on my soap-box :)
DeleteI would be very interested in your css code and the LibreOffice template. I never thought to look for one. Interestingly, as I wrote I imagined it as a screenplay, not realising it influenced the writing.
I've now finished your second Margaret Sykes book, and enjoyed it. It's quite different to the first one. There are several things I really liked about it. Predictably for me, they were mostly the SF aspects. :) I caught a number of typos. I'll email them to you along with the css code and OpenOffice/LibreOffice scriptwriting template.
DeleteThank you for writing these, and for making them freely available. I hope you write more novels and short stories.
Oh... oops... heheh :) I don't seem to have your email address. I'll messenger you those things via facebook. :)
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