All Comments on 'Vanishing Laura'

Seems like there was a promising premise here, then a slap-dash hurry to flesh it out without much care. Run on sentences, dull violent sex. No depth to the characters. The whole twins/murder/jealousy/framing could have been the backbone of a good story, but this wasn't it.

And how could the guy who had painted and slept with both twins nude, one with the star tattoo, not know which one he was seeing nude on the beach? He apparently forgot about the tattoo entirely. It made no sense.

3*

It makes perfect sense to me: Laura was jealous of her sister so she killed Libby and rigged the news reports so they reported that Laura had died, Cal had nothing to do with that or the murder, and he didn't know Laura wasn't the one who was dead. Then Laura pretended to be Libby while at the same time "haunted" Cal into thinking he was seeing Laura's ghost and caused Reba to jump to conclusions, as many cops have been known to do. So the star on Laura makes perfect sense. Actually, I hope Reba is cleared, after all Cal WAS attempting to whack Laura with a shovel...

A full and interesting murder mystery plot, excellent writing, and very well developed characters. Very unusual for this site. Each character is given a personality and believable motivation in the mystery. The sex fetishes are extreme for me, and I didn't like Cal (but I'm presuming I'm not supposed to like him, just to leave the story thinking he almost got unfairly screwed by putting himself in the position to be screwed over). Both of these went into making a strong story, I think. Again, not the usual fare here. I didn't guess the twist and don't know what else the story could have been expected to do. A cut well above the norm for stories at this site. I think one of the anonymous comments here is so far off base in comment and rating that I vote it at least a 6 to give it justice. Best of luck in the contest.

I liked the murder mystery angle and thought the sex was will-written, overall found it a fun read. Would have liked to have seen some of the ideas fleshed out a bit more... but wanting more is a good sign with fiction.