Discussion of "Thou Shalt Not Kill (2)" by wsells

Great addition. It read really well. Nice ending.

Ah, yessss! Subtle...descriptive...great character build for the detective and his "side kick"....good research...and I love stories that throw in german words...lol. Excellent writing, wsells!! Fünf punkte!

Wsells~
What I liked about your chapter is I felt like it fit in nicely with the pace of the first one. Strictly from a storyline perspective, reading them both back to back seems to work.
I think you did a fantastic job bringing the police characters to life. Really good details and dialogue in the first part. The counting backwards was a nice touch for the story…and beginning the next paragraph with counting backwards was a great little detail that goes a long way for me. Well crafted.
What I didn’t like was that Petrov was caught with a teenage boy and wasn’t either behind bars or forever out of the life of our main character. A woman such as I believe Adara to be, would have reported such activity to the authorities despite how it may have affected her. She would have been riddled with guilt otherwise. And especially after catching him the second time and realizing he wanted to be caught! And if for some reason she didn’t report him, then she certainly would NEVER come to him for anything. She would loathe him and she would go to the second best there was just to avoid being in the same room with him. You did describe her conflicting feelings well, still…I just couldn’t buy into it.
I do think it works wonderfully, having him be an ex and himself a committer of adultery. I just think the teenage boy detail was too much. Cheating in general can be forgiven not forgotten. Pedophilia…eh, not so much. My opinion anyway. I can see how others may disagree.
Lastly, you switched from 1st to 3rd POV in this chapter. Which isn’t wrong when working with the detectives. However when you brought it back to Adara, you should have switched it back to her POV. Continuity!
I believe given an opportunity to correct a few edits it would be a great continuation.
As a whole I voted a 4.

Thanks for the feedback, Dog. I agree with you about the teenager. I think in my mind he was 18 and that she would call him a boy from her perspective, but i didn't say it. Never did I have in mind he was less than 18. And, as you said, there's no need for it other than the cheating. Thanks, again.

Makes more sense now. Thanks for following up with an explanation wsells!

I really liked how you worked in the victims being found from last to first. the only thing this detracts, for me anyway, is that there is no possibility of anyone being saved from their fate...some divine intervention. No worries, though. I will be interested to see how it progresses. I too, was a little perplexed by the teen boy episode, but as you stated before, he could have been an older teen. I don't know that I felt personnally vested in this one, but it was really good.

Thanks, Persephonie. It's an intensly fun story to work with. So much there but you can only write one chapter. Ahhh! I wish I had the time to do an epic like Dog does (part I and II) lol. I only have little windows of time to crank anything out. Thanks again.

Nice work introducing the detective. I’m not sure if you meant them to be comic figures or not, maybe foils to Dr. Davis? I’m only wondering because they seem like terrible cops. The rookie wonders if the crucifixion is a suicide, how one would work that out I don’t know. And the veteran has some funny math skills:
‘“I meant “No” in German, but since you asked, yes, yesterday was nine. Today is ten.”
“So, the perp is done? Ten commandments, right?”
“Wrong. We were supposed to find this one first, but he didn’t count on the miners. This one was found lying down on the cross. The cross fell over. He messed up by not digging the hole deep enough to support the weigth of the wood and the body. What we learn is, the guy is counting backwards.”’
It seems they have found 10 bodies, but rearranging the order in which they were killed somehow makes less then 10? Anyway, I like that they are sort of incompetent, it leaves more room for Dr. Davis to step in, take charge, and prove that she can help people with her gift after all. Gives us all some comic relief also. Also, nice twist with the hypnotist and her finding the anagram of the place where the killer might live.

Excellent job. As usual. Hmpf. I gave it a 10, but only 5 showed up.

Hey OS! Good to hear from you - you're still one of my SM favs!

This is very creative and well done. The voice and pace of the detective scene reads like a modern-day crime novel and I love the addition of the fact that the murders were meant to be discovered in a certain order that was messed up by the perp himself. I do think that you might want to figure out what kind of voice this is to be told in b/c the detectives do come off as either really ignorant or totally slapstick and you just want to make sure that fits with how the rest of it will play out. I also thought the details about Adara's background were nicely integrated, though I'm not sure I buy that she would actually go to him for help. That could be developed more.

I am totally blown away. I absolutely love your writing style and find your voice intriguing. Your dialogue is crisp and realistic, and your characters are gritty.

I like that you started this chapter out with the police detectives instead of sticking with Adara--it gives a different dimension to the story.

The fact that the murders are counting down the commandments backwards is C-R-E-E-P-Y!

I, contrary to many of the other comments, had no problem with Petrov's affair with a teenaged boy. I assumed him to be 17, 18, or 19, so not ALL that scandalous (other than the cheating, of course).

You've left this chapter off at a great spot that could easily be picked up and go in a million different directions.

Well done!! I can't wait to read more.

Something I did just notice, though, is that you wrote the entire chapter in the third person point of view rather than the first person point of view that the first chapter maintains. In the future, keep track of these sorts of details so that your chapter will meld with the previous chapter seamlessly.

You really amused me with the banter and childish humor between the detectives. But then, I’m a punster and limericist, so amusing me may not necessarily be a good thing. And by the end of that section it was getting to be a bit much; you might want to tone it down and give these characters another dimension or two besides bad-attitude homicide cops.

Once you switched to Adara you really pulled me in. I didn’t check the sidebar once to see if I was getting close to through with your chapter. It was kind of disjointed and didn’t flow smoothly for me, but you brought out some interesting ideas. Once you got into Adara trying to decipher what she saw under hypnosis, you really started to shine. Very inventive, very clever, and very interesting.