Okay. I am going in deep, nitpicking every single detail, so this might seem a bit overly long, but it’s often just minor stuff.
“Riiiiiiing, Riiiiiiing, Riiiiiing” in comics and other visual narrative media you usually go for this. In prose, while the occasional sound word does help establish the ambience, it would be much better to describe it in actual words and sentences. It was ringing, how was it ringing, loud, silent, annoyingly, how long was it ringing, what did the character think/reacted when it began ringing, did his facial expression changed, did he rush for the phone, did he curse or wonder who was calling, was he expecting the call, was there no reaction at all, etc. See how many things you can reveal by describing the ringing rather than going for a simple sound word? I know you said he rolled over and answered sleepily, but still you can code in more information in more subtle ways.
““Detective McAnic?!” Demanded the caller’s voice. “Me.””
--> Me sounds odd. Use something like “speaking” as a response, sounds more natural.
“of the men behind the desk at the police station” – repetition of men and this is really, really, really vague, it’s as if saying: he recognized him as one of the faces in the crowd. Be more specific, where exactly has he seen/heard the man?
“Asked sleepily, answered grumpily, etc” – kill as many adverbs as you can especially in dialogue tags, there is always a better way to describe the response.
More on the latter tag: “hanging up” did he literally say that while simultaneously hanging up? Be careful with the –ing verbs, it is more logical in this case to say: “and hung up.”
Be mindful of repeating the same word in the same or the neighbouring sentences, you have a few repetitions here and there, which can be easily eliminated with a single re-read. You have some other, verb and structure mistakes all over that would hint you didn’t revise at all.
One sentence paragraphs often help establishing tension, but you should only do them once in a while, not one after another, just put in all the actions as he parks gets out, etc in a single paragraph.
If he is a detective and he needs to touch anything at the crime scene he will put on gloves, show him do that somewhere.
Where he describes the man was shot in the chest, it’s as if the others can’t see that, and believe me shot in the chest is pretty obvious, just put in in the character observation, not the dialogue. In the dialogue place the non-obvious stuff that he would be logically telling the officer, or make it sound not obvious, like: the first shot in the chest didn’t kill him so they shot him again in the head, etc, etc.
What is the reason he would conclude he wasn’t carrying normal stuff in the wallet? Because it was big? Not enough.
“he hit the asphalt pretty hard.” – he had hit, else you are talking about Janz, be careful of the tenses. In this short paragraph it is a bit hard to distinguish between the victim and Janz since you use “he” for both.
“Something was nagging at the back of his mind though;” what was? You need to say it, or at the very least that he didn’t know yet but there was something off.
“Janz gulped.” What was he afraid/nervous about? I think you have the wrong emote here.
“I just wonder . . . how did it all happen?” : they were shot, with a pistol, a couple of times, that’s how. Now why is a valid question. A case like this the officer will question the motive rather than the execution since the murder method is quite obvious.
“He asked questions of scenes that nobody else even considered. He hunted for clues that seemed pointless. No criminal he had ever latched onto had ever escaped.” Show don’t tell.
“He didn’t even bother to look for other clues” well that’s rather unprofessional and arrogant. How did he ever solve a single case if he didn’t attend to all the clues, present or missing?
“Usually the lower ranking detectives went for things like this, and the better detectives like himself where sent after the bigger deals.” Arrogant. He has a job, there is a case, he is called, there is no such thing as a “too high a rank,” you are a detective you do the job you are given.
“His last job had only been finished last night.” Again. He has a job. He is not entitled to a Caribbean cruise after every case. He inspects the scene and evidence, finds the criminal, submits the report, off to another case.
“He nodded to the police officer.” Go back to the station; I’ll take care of this.”: that’s upside down. The Detective should go back to the office leaving the officer to wrap up the scene after all evidence has been recovered and the scene examined. The police cars will never leave before the “cleaning” is over, at least one, two, will always remain.
“Janz wasn’t a great detective because he came up with random spouts of brilliancy. He was methodical, and determined in everything he did, he didn’t let anything stop him.” Show, don’t tell.
“He knew the Captain at the station wouldn’t mind him taking on the case” wasn’t he called to the scene? That kind of means the captain is assigning him to the case already.
At times you have really short, really nice and to the point descriptions, but at others they feel rigid or needing more. I would suggest going back and reading it out loud to see if you can vividly imagine the story and if everything flows nicely.
There is much potential to the story, but as it is now it is sloppy, language and logic wise. That normal for a first draft, but it means you will have a lot of work to do, a lot of revising, rereading and redoing. I would also suggest you read more detective novels, and maybe see some TV-shows. I know it’s a bad way to get the exact reality of police operation, but it will give you a base. The police often releases old cases to the public or civil courts are recorded so you can look for such too.
Points: 11451
Reviews: 131
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