Murders in Beer

Hi there, I'm so sorry this has taken so long, I completely forgot.

First of all, you really need to break this up into chapters. Nobody will want to read if your first chapter is so long, it's off-putting. Four chapters in one isn't going to do you any favors.

I don't think this needs a prologue. I'm sure you know most agents aren't fans of them, and I think if you just added it to chapter one it would improve the entire MS.

Your characterizations, for the most part, are good, with Stephanie and Peter especially. They would be able to come to life a little bit better, however, if you tightened up the prose. This needs a thorough editing. You're going to lose a lot of would-be readers because of the punctuation errors (missing quotations, missing commas) run on sentences, and grammatical errors. It could be the best MS in the world, but they will pass right by it when they see a bunch of mistakes.

A nice, descriptive and well written book. Your writing style is very impressive, dialogue are realistic with vivid charachters and narrative is at great pace. Highly rated.

this story is over-telling. you have potential. just needs another edit.
j

Hi again Ray. You have a charming and time-capsuled way of writing that, at times, is quite enchanting. But this piece of work needs a lot of editing. I am well aware that you want to give the reader the feel of the West Country but too much of it it can be hard work . I would try to keep it mostly to dialogue only. There's also quite a bit of punctuation that need addressing.
E.G. Chap 1: omit speech mark at 'What is all this about. I don't think anyone is speaking here. And further down at 'why was that I could not help.
And I don't know why there is a semi-colon in: 'Tripp was a queer from the moment; he first met Vincent Wardes...?
Further down you say Sally Black spoke to Mr. Scott :- 'Are you enjoying your stay...' But later Sally says, 'I'd wasted enough time this morning...' indicating that she doesn't speak to him then.
I also think your novel is too wordy, moving away from the plot.. At times I felt a bit bogged down with peripheral details, when I just wanted to get to the story.
Stephen King advises in his book 'On Writing' to edit, edit and edit again. Pare everything down to the bare bones. It's not an easy job but it will give your story more impact and flow more freely.
Having said all this, some of your phrases are delightful and put a smile on my face.
Hope some of this has been of use. Good luck, Sully

I did try to give the reader a taste of the Devon country broage,with this dialogue , and that is why it is not grammaticality correct. However I will fix the grammar errors. Thank you for your comments and I will return your read soonest after the holiday. Ray

[

QUOTE] "I feel it do be time".....doesn't sound right. Maybe take out "do" and replace it with "to"

"grockles do beat us".....perhaps take out "do".

(Perhaps this is the way people speak in the UK?)

let us go to it boys, the storm......(should be a period, instead of a comma)

driftwood for us hey......should be us, hey....(comma)

after my dogs, for three days.......should be a period, not a comma here.

The most errors I am finding are commas and periods (run on sentences). Your writing style is engaging, and so is your story. I can see his little hide out, and can imagine the dogs. Let me know when you make corrections in punctuation and I'll read it again.

Could you possibly do a return read for me? I'd greatly appreciate it!
Thank you, and sincerely,
D. S. Hale
Jessup and the Teleporter

"I feel it do be time".....doesn't sound right. Maybe take out "do" and replace it with "to"

"grockles do beat us".....perhaps take out "do".

(Perhaps this is the way people speak in the UK?)

let us go to it boys, the storm......(should be a period, instead of a comma)

driftwood for us hey......should be us, hey....(comma)

after my dogs, for three days.......should be a period, not a comma here.

The most errors I am finding are commas and periods (run on sentences). Your writing style is engaging, and so is your story. I can see his little hide out, and can imagine the dogs. Let me know when you make corrections in punctuation and I'll read it again.

Could you possibly do a return read for me? I'd greatly appreciate it!
Thank you, and sincerely,
D. S. Hale
Jessup and the Teleporter

Hi Ray,

When I was holidaying in and around Beer as a child, I never knew it was such a hotbed of crime and corruption. You've done for Devon what David Peace did for Yorkshire. So well done! A fistful of stars for now... And hope you get to check out The Devil's Fan Club.

All the best,

Mark

Hello Hyperion :}

i read through chapter one, and I must say it has a very unique plot. It begins with the main character living a positive, and cheerful life. As usual you do a great job at character development. As her life progresses, and her ambitions darken, she turns to a world of sin. Losing her positive self-image, she is now a slave to her negative self.

The reason I find this so unique is because so many main characters don't betray all of their intentions. One could say she refused the call of the hero, thus turning against herself. This makes want to read more to find if she finds herself again.

You write with an old-fashioned, though never out of date, style (one that I really like). I appreciate the color and tone of what I've read so far (chapters one and two). This needs editing. Feel free to ask me about it, if you wish for details. But, I think this story is a good one, and I'm able to sprinkle it with stars for you.
Best,
John B Campbell

Hi, have read a couple of chapters and I like the way it is going. Will give some stars and return, still on WL. Have you looked at (When the Earth Moved)? Regards Sandy

I really like this. Rated with 6 stars/watchlist. Best of luck. Cape Torment

Here is a review from the Brutally Honest Group

Hi Ray

You start your novel with a good opening paragraph.

Unfortunately, paragraph 2 just repeats the same information: 'Cousin Rudy' is new information - dump the rest.

Is it Raymond Cru - or Raymond Cruse?

You make a sweeping generalisation about the Poles, which is probably offensive - but I don;'t know any, so what the hell...

Gdansk 1982

Your first sentence is grammatically incorrect.

You need commas before 'thank God' and after 'however.'

You completely lost me in the next paragraphs. I struggled to work out the relationships and events between Victor, Cruse, Rubenska, Rudy, Greg and Gregor - very confusing.

Then WHO came home to that dreadful day? And who the heck is 'Rue?'

'it was safe to use?' WHAT was safe to use? :(

Plurals: 'those poor lad..'

Inverted comma needed: 'a heartless killer of these boys

Ahh, it is RAMON CRUZE now!


April 1987 Gdansk, Poland

Another sweeping generalisation about the Poles - I trust you are not needing any plumbing or joinery doing in the next year, Ray? ;)

Another time shift: another name - RAMON CRUSE now.

sp. barstard = bastard.

Waterloo Railway Station - Stephanie

Mmm, the switch to first person jars a little. However, I do think she suddenly becomes the most believable of your characters. Having said that, she has far too much back story. All the stuff about Daddy is just irritating - I would suggest that you drop it and just concentrate on telling us about how her murderous relationship with her husband. However, if you keep it please just call him ' Daddy' - not PA. You should not confuse your readers by constantly changing the names of your characters.

Overall, Ray, I think that you have probably got a really good story lurking behind these stylistic problems. I think that you need to just try to tell it simply - possibly even chronologically.

Anyway, the best of luck.

Susanna
'Catching the Eagle'

Hi Ray, haven't got to your book yet, have added it to my watchlist. However, have noticed in your synopsis you have said 'wed' of deceit when I think you may mean 'web'. Also, fourth paragraph down 'Hyperion Scott.....' think the grammer / sentence structure may need revision (if you read it out loud is doesn't flow well). Perhaps try:
'Hyperion Scott, an author of crime novels and once a police inspector, arrives in Beer. He is forced to confront his past......'
Just a thought, will try and get to the book soon.
Best wishes,
BJ
(I am Ben)

It does read a lot smoother now. I think there may be a typo in the second paragraph: I hoped that n but the foolhardy... Where I think n should be ‘none’.

The dialogue in the first part was a little stilted because you didn't use many contractions i.e. let us instead of let's. Overall I think you did capture his voice but the unusual sentence structure he uses worked better at some times than others.

You start off well with the dogs eager to go and the image of death ahead of them, but then you sort of go backwards describing him about to leave and what the previous night was like. This kills the momentum and the sentence construction was awkward. If you start with him about to leave, then he should leave. Going backwards to describe his preparations for leaving didn't seem right, and felt like unnecessary padding. I found the information on smuggling and his view on life to be interesting but it dragged on a bit for me and I could have done little less. A matter of personal preference though. The discovery of the body is well done and sets up the story nicely.

The start of Gregor's section contains a lot of information to take in. It's a little repetitive too, and the wayward punctuation doesn't help either. It is unclear who Petre or the narrator are. It makes for a convoluted start to that part of the story. you

It doesn't make sense that the father read the newspapers to find out about Victor's death and Cruze's whereabouts, and that ‘Petre and I’ learnt English in order to also be able to read the English newspapers too, and then you say: Perhaps it was then that Victor... Victor is already dead at that point, that's why they read the papers, no? That's probably not how you mean it but it is very confusingly put.

I feel you needs to be much clearer about who is who and what it is that they're looking for exactly. You obviously know that Victor is the eldest son, but it doesn't become apparent until much later on which makes it jarring to follow and is also unclear who the Gdansk boys are. I realise you go on to explain these things later, but what may seem a reasonable level of unknown information to you when you already know everything isn't necessarily reasonable to the reader. If things are presented in too confusing a fashion the reader isn't going to just keep reading in the hope it will all gets sorted out eventually, they'll just stop reading. Being able to gauge how much information you need to not be vague but at the same time not be too obvious is a tricky skill. At the moment my feeling is you’ve gone too far in the direction of vague.

I'm not sure why you keep capitalising certain words like Murder and Life.

You say that wherever detective Carter was Cru would not be far away, but you don't say why he thinks that. I would think Cru would try to be as far away as possible.

The transition to 1985 was a little jarring. The style of writing also felt a bit off, more Edwardian than 1980s. I didn't find the way they spoke to be very convincing. And what kind of dining car on a train has movable chairs? The appearance of Cruze was a nice touch but overall that scene wasn't believable, and felt muddled jumping around in time and in out of dreams.

I think the first chapter presents three distinct ideas. The discovery of a body on the beach. A Polish family out for revenge. A villain hiding in England. In story terms those three things are interesting and have potential. But the quality of the writing often let you down. At times it was very convoluted and confusing and difficult for me to follow. I got the gist of it, but it was hard work. Partly the numerous small errors and typos make it hard to read with any flow, but also the awkward syntax and sentence construction is very off-putting and by the end of the first chapter I felt like I didn't want to keep struggling on.

I would suggest the first thing to do would be to read it out loud to yourself and I think you will find a lot of mistakes that you can easily remedy. I think you also put in too much information at times and streamlining the story would help a lot.

‘Can dogs’ smell death... firstly why is ‘can dog’ in quotes? I have no idea what that is meant to convey. Some kind of emphasis? A lot of the punctuation in this story feels random and confusing.

Secondly, dogs have very sensitive noses and dead bodies smell very bad, so yes they can smell death. I assume you mean it in a more abstract way, like 'can dogs smell hate' but you link it very strongly to rotting corpses making it seem quite an obvious statement.

...me boy’s always seem... Again the punctuation here seems wrong. It's plural boys, not possessive boy’s.

Cum’ -here what does the apostrophe denote? Usually it means a missing letter, but because you've changed the spelling it doesn't make sense. Also when you change the spelling for dialect reasons the whole point is to show how it sounds different, but come and cum sound exactly the same when you read out loud. What you're doing is showing that you want the character to sound different, but you aren't actually doing it.

Why is ‘stinking like hell’ in quotes? There seems to be no reason unless he is actually quoting someone. Or if he's being sarcastic. If you had written that line without those quotes what difference would it make? None that I can see.

Wat’-if this is meant to be what in his accent then it should be W’at. The apostrophe goes where the missing letter is supposed to be.

“Well my boys, stop ya’ scratching, I am as eager as yea it to be’ to get out, for it be well past time for us to get started this morning. “Let's be av’in you then, cum me lovely boys’, go check, come Jasper, go to it lads.”

In the above line, I didn’t really think this captured the West Country accent you seem to be going for. It doesn’t help that it’s so full of basic grammatical errors. You start with quotation marks and then have more quotation marks in the middle for no reason (before Let's) and then end with quotation marks making three quotation marks in one speech. You also put be’ with no indication of why there is an apostrophe after be. The word av’in I would suggest should be ‘avin’ since the letters that are missing are h and g. You use the word cum and then you also use the word come, making it's unclear if that means he saying these words differently or if you are just being inconsistent.

While I can work out what it is you're trying to say, all these little mistakes and inconsistencies make it very hard to read with any flow and also doesn't make me want to read on if I'm going to have to struggle through a sea of similar odd punctuation.

'To tell the truth of it,' we are glad... here again I do not know why you have put the first bit in quotes. The same goes for 'at the scrumpy'. I know what it means, I just don't know why you keep putting things in quotes at random (seemingly).

I would say that if I had picked this up in a bookshop or library I wouldn't have got past the first page. It's is extremely confusing and inconsistent, and I can't really make head or tail of it. While I expect the odd mistake or punctuation error in a draft, there are far too many here. I can't really see any agent or publisher taking this manuscript seriously until you have fixed most of these problems.

I would suggest you remove all single quotation marks, and be careful that you only put double quotation marks at the beginning and end of speech spoken aloud. Then change all the dialect stuff to standard English. It just isn't done well enough at the moment. The only place where you should keep some accented words is within those speeches that are in double quotes. Those are the parts said out loud so you can show how they sound, but you still shouldn't go overboard. One or two words at most. In the narrative I would strongly suggest you don't mess around with accent and dialect at all. The important thing here first and foremost is story and you have made it almost impossible to get to it by putting up this barrage of confusing punctuation. I think you are concentrating too much on style and the story is suffering because of that.

Have 6 starred this and added to our WL which means you WILL make our shelf in the next (+3) round of backings (its 11pm for us). Check our comments trail if u want to confirm this and do feel free to chase at ANY TIME to know exactly how long till ur going up...

MURDERS IN BEER

for the BH group

COVER: hm, the title is too small and font a bit bland. the painting isn't threatening enough, to match the pitches anyway. but its decent enough for authonomy. Let me know if I can give you a hand.
TITLE: I think it's pretty good...part of me was expecting some kind of barroom thriller in the pitches though.
SHORT PITCH: A little awkward, might try it again....but I think it okay.
LONG PITCH: Needs to be split into paragraphs. you have "wed" when I believe you mean web. overall this isn't enticing me to want to read further. Sorry!
TEXT: I'm trying to figure out what word 'Id' is? I'd? Makes me think a tiny bit of that fun movie "River's Edge" I love Crispin Glover's performance in that... and also a tiny bit of Twin Peaks... dead girl images I suppose.
too much clickity clack
by the end of the first chapter I think this a solid start to a thriller/crime novel. I'd do away with the device you employ with the clickety clack...each time I read it after the first few I grew annoyed, sorry! could just be me.
I'd also possibly find a way to chop it up into a couple chapters...it felt longish to me.
Other than that, I'd say good job!
Best of luck.
-=Bradley

Ray,
I enjoyed very much the beginning of Murders in Beer. I look forward to reading it when it's published.
Nancy
SEA LEVEL

Intricate, fascinating, and beautifully constructed. What more could one ask of a book? I tip my hat to the author!
Very Best Regards, jedward (Knut)

The West Country accent of Giles Rattenbury, beachcomber and latest scion of the Rattenbury smugger clan is a delightful introduction to this murder /mystery tale set mostly on the devon coast / Exeter but with odd excursions to Poland and elsewhere. These Rattenbury's keep appearing and the author catches the burr as nicely as the nearby accents of Blackmore's Doone's or the characters who peopled Trollope's Barsetshire. Giles' dogs find the bruised body of 'Lady Rosen' on the beach and soon he is incarcerated as the chief suspect in Exeter jail. Hyperion Scott (good literary name) soon investigates this clear miscarriage of justice aided by JimTripp, his intrepid driver/assistant, and the pair soon become embroiled in a bewildering series of events from which they don't emerge unscathed. No one is who they seem to be in this and there are more suspects with a motive than in an Orient bound express train. The setting is the eighties (you remember betamax tapes, Rubik cubes and these new fangled fax machines) and Hyperion is already a bit behind the times but has his own unique, ageless, style. The narrative voice changes early on can be confusing and often thoughts and action are not clearly differentiated in long sentences which should have fewer commas and more full stops. However a careful edit would soon sort all that out and the fast paced plotline keeps you guessing until the final showdown.

Murders in Beer is smart writing and clever development. I've read the first chapters and I'm hooked. I will be reading more, and I recommend that other on this site read this.

Jay Archer David

An intriguing crime story, set in a very beautiful part of England.

I like the way you use the train as a backdrop to the murderer's daydreaming/back story in chapter 1.

The text does have issues with tense and punctuation that need addressing. The mixed tenses are particularly noticeable, as there is a visible example of this in the opening paragraphs.

J.S.Watts
A DARKER MOON

Hi Ray

I really liked the way you wove in all Stephanie's backstory with the clickety-clack of the train wheels and managed to make her sympathetic in spite of her obviously being quite an unpleasant person. I also like the idea of a crime novel within a crime novel, with Hyperion's profession - clever. I think the punctuation and tenses need some work, but that is easy enough to get a professional subeditor to sort out. Otherwise, this is fitting up to be a classic Fifties style crime novel, with aristocrats of dubious provenance on a train and sleep Devonshire towns. Backed (but please wait a day to see the backing as there are other books on my shelf at present).

Nicole
Chosen

The plot twists and turns against the backdrop of a beautiful part of the country. So nice to have a real crime thriller without the all pervading vampires and magic which seem to pop up in too many other books. I did notice a couple of glitches which you may want to take a look at.
In the first class carriage "How spoilt I thought the..." are there some speech marks missing from here?
"Branscome/Branscombe" small spelling error likewise "boarder collies" should be 'border'
"See a very to blame the Beer boys" - I think there may be some missing words
Hope this helps.
Backed
Robert Davidson
THE TUZLA RUN

You have written a very interesting and unique storyline, which I do like, and created a most memorable main character in Rion. I also really like your use of the first person narrative voice. The dialogue is realistic and well written and the pace of your story flows well. All of this along with your descriptive writing makes your crime thriller a pleasure to read. Backed.

Andrew Burans
The Reluctant Warrior: The Beginning

The plot is intricate and you wrote it well. It held my interest though the 11 chapters. Thank you for wrting this.

a very enjoyable read, backed for sure

alison

From the outset you enliven a setting that brings Beer straight through the page. The reader is able to feel their way straight into the narrative and become part of it. excellent.

BACKED

Dear Ray

I have started to read your writing and must say that it is compelling. Already you have established your animated characters in my head, ( they are not leaving soon) and i feel strongly to back your book now. such talent you have to create a compelling read for me. I also believe your long pitch sells your book well. I do wish to be part of your climb to the top on this site. CONGRATS and I will comment more as I read more.

Please take a moment to look, COMMENT which is important to me, and BACK my book. if not that is OK also

The VERY best of luck to you

BACKED BY ME FOR SURE
Denise
The Letter

good pace that keeps us interested. effective narrative, engaging dialogue- good work; on my watchlist...
read SEASONS...

Dear Ray, I love your intrigue in your story & how you put me right there to feel what your characters are feeling. :) The novelist sure got a lot of good fodder for his "Smugglers" book that he thought he might write. :) I'd sure not like to live where there is danger & murders - glad I'm not in that environment. :) Your pitch pulled me in to read you book & your tight dialogue & paragraphs kept me reading. :) I've backed this & your other book :) - hope you'll take a moment to back my memoir book. :) Thanks so much. :) Love, Susie :)