All Comments on 'Ships That Pass In The Night'

Excellent story, Chas. Well done.

Realistically, this was a 3 star effort. Two much intrigue in too little time, most of which made little sense.

The only clubs left near the airport are Babes and the New York club. Queen of hearts is now a parking lot for a trucking company. BTW I used to be the Assit Manager of the Mapco up the street from there. I graduated from High school in that area

That was a great BtB!

It was nice to see the gold-digging whores end up in the gutter after he destroyed the pair of them.

Everyone should begin with a douchey intro. Gets the readers in the mood to give you a two, which I did.

Great balance of enough detail to carry the plot, but not so much as to bog down the simple BTB. I would expect engineers with MBAs and govt contracts to be ahead of housewives and used car salesmen, and so it went.

Another detective story? How cool is that? I love detective stories! Nice job.

They go from having a drink to waking up in bed together. Since I don't see him as looking for a hook-up, how did that happen?

/

Too much detail about the detective's office. Okay, you hired a detective, the rest is padding. It would be useful for a screenplay, not for a short story.

/

Meh - where's the fun when the protagonist knows everything? There needs to be some tension, maybe SOME repercussions for the fact that he DID cheat, even if it was a set-up.

Could have used a little more character development and interaction between the characters but all in all it was ok.

Gave it 4* - You gave fair warning and the plot was pretty solid. I didn't get any emotion by either spouses so it was hard to get to involved in the otherwise well written story.

Good tale. Rated a solid four.

FYI - there is no parole for Fedral convictions. They do have an earned reduced sentence option for some.

Did he just 'retire' from writing or did something more serious happened to him?

Actually want to know - he's also one of my favorite authors.

As for the story - an easy 5★ for a clever twist on a very familiar tale. However, 'gotta mention that the MC, once again, could have saved himself some major headaches if he just vet his wife before marrying her in the first place - he would have then saved himself 6 years on his life, wasted on this obvious gold-digger.

Nice one, author; thanks for the share.

Any time you can work Sam Spade and Humphrey Bogart into the plot it's a good day. My only question was why he slept with Traci? How did that fit into anyone's plan? And one other thing. Did something happen to JimBob44? Hope he's okay. One more thing. Flying on Southwest Airlines on a flight with multiple stops, is a nightmare, regardless of the destination. Thanks for the entertainment.

4 stars

Hear, hear for JimBob44. Truly one of a kind. I’d pay well for an anthology of his work.

This reads as a well fleshed out premise for a full length novel. Some potentially great characters I’d love to get to know better. Allison and Traci - what a duo. And Dolly? Come on! She sounds like wet dream inspiration - definitely deserves her own story.

Anyway, thanks - it was an entertaining read.

to sit in the middle seat.

But, yes, we all would like them to.

Quick, tight little story, will greedy wife, her x athlete lover and crooked lawyers.

The only thing missing was a corrupt greedy politician, but that's an unneeded extra.

Thanks.

Great story! Burned the cheating wife and all the conspirators with no bloodshed. I can't understand why Allison wasn't satisfied with being a millionaire's wife and wanted more. I guess that's what makes a good LW story.

I'm not sure where the seduction fits in. It sounds like he was drugged, in which case he might have been happier if he'd taken a pass. Then again,....

I always wonder about statements like this: "In case of infidelity, which this certainly was, Allison would be forced to move out of the house, taking only her car, her clothing and personal belongings, and $1000 cash." How does one do that? Do they say, "I love you. Will you marry me? And, oh, sign this...."?

It’s so helpful with these stories, when the PI finally gets a camera in the cheaters lair that after the sex, the cheaters give a complete accounting of their trysts and plans to destroy the husband.

Good story!

5

Noir, fer gods sake.

A little dry, but wet in this case would be distraction to lead the reader in the wrong direction... not popular among those who like simple stories.

Life is not necessarily good for the well to do, and their parasites.

Green-something

Nice plot. 5

Perhaps it shows the quality of a degree at some of these universities since her graduate degree earned her the quality career of a truck stop hooker.

Story 4*. - 1* for the title.

I gather that there was a pre-nup, but I cannot figure out how any pre-nup would have provided that a cheating spouse would be bankrupted.

Too many unrealistic stuff in the story, and no real explanation of why Allison behaved as she did.

Nothing great.

liked it, always written well. the only problem i had is u made the MC too intelligent to have married Allison. idk someone like him seems like he does his homework when making a decision like marriage, protecting his business.

JimBob44 has posted as recently as July, though not in this category, it was in Anal. I've heard nothing about him being gone.

What was that Jimbob44 in the beginning of the story? Something happened to him ?

I got confused by the timeline. Otherwise, really good.

CaOldDog: Allison never got a graduate degree, she was just an idle trophy wife. Traci was the disbarred lawyer who ended up as a stripper.

Though with $1,000 and only her car, I question why Allison had to get away so far. She could have gone to a closer city and sold the clunker to rebuild her life. Buses to the West Coast would have been cheaper then. But then again all slutwives in this section don’t have much brains.

Is Dolly just a hand-me-down that Bobby is giving to Sam as a consolation prize? Why don’t he or Jack have wives?

Well done, would have been a 4* but as a JimBob fan it's definitely a 5*. Whatever happened to JimBob anyway? Thank you for great little story.

You forgot to mention how he became president of the United States, made peace in the middle East and found the cure for cancer for which he was officially made a Saint.

Sorry! Of course he couldn't could he? He was in prison along with his lawyer and private eye for illegally planting spy cameras in an hotel and using bugging devices in a restaurant. He also lost all his money when the damaged parties all sued him, then the FBI realise he was sleeping with a subversive i.e. Traci, and so his contracts were removed and the company was destroyed. Oh! And for good measure FBI evidence proved he cheated so Alison was awarded the house and whatever money he had left.

This was two pages long, half of it was tedious detail and the rest chest thumping for BTB lovers who will no doubt lap it up. A nice dream for them but really just a dream.

For everyone asking about JimBob44, read his latest submission dtd 7/2/20. "Yawning Abyss", page 13.

I know most people who read and post comments are unlikely to go back and read this comment, but maybe it will answer questions of future readers,

Chas

What was even the point of mentioning him if you had no intention of elaborating? What happened to my favorite writer?!! I read yawning of the abyss and learned absolutely nothing. Did something happen to him? Did he quit writing?. I don't understand why not just tell us. Instead making us read a story that doesn't tell us what your comment mean... just ridiculous and your story was sorta boring. I'm giving you 2 stars

Thanks Chas4455!

Both for your delightful little story

and for letting us know about JimBob44.

Some readers saw flaws in the story.

I can't argue with good comments,

but I don't think those flaws are important.

But I do wonder about the relationship

between husband and wife.

The story was too short to explain that.

But not too short to be entertaining.

With all things considered

I give this story my top ratings.

And look forward to the next story

from this interesting writer.

... to fit the phrase - Like ships that pass in the night. The stretch so big that it fails.

At least he got the lie/lay usage right--which is rare for LW stories.

"Doll Face and I are lying on a beach in Aruba, soaking up the rays."

those that can't try to steal the payoff and are shocked when it goes bad.

They should all remember that those that do and succeed. Do so by being a step ahead. That alone should be enough to make them realize that they are usually a step behind. Oh well the prisons are full of people who are so much smarter then everyone else.

I liked it but I can't help feeling there could have been so much more if you had let it develop.

If you are going to do a story where the husband already knows everything and has a plan, you can't then do 1st person PoV during the part where he is pretending to be fooled. Either he knew Traci and her plan or he didn't, you can't have it both ways, that's just cheating.

If you are going to employ the "Unreliable narrator" thing, that works if it's framed as if the character narrating is talking to another, like he is telling the story to them and purposefully keeping them in the dark. If it's just straight up lying to the audience, then we might as well assume Traci and Allison's plan worked and everything past the MC sleeping with Traci is an alcohol fueled dream as he is trying to drink his troubles away after his life having been destroyed. Or he killed himself and it's the afterlife where everything went right for him.

As it stands, the beginning was just a straight up lie. And who the hell is Doll Face? I know the trope of giving the main character a new wife or girlfriend at the end of a revenge story to assure the audience that he's alright is standard, but goddamn, she gets a sentence and a half and not even a name. That's just pathetic, might as well just have left her out.

A vile, contemptible smear of the good people who attend the glorious university in Oxford, Mississippi! This author must be one of those poor, benighted, and delusional cult of miscreants known as Volunteers or Vols (or voles) or whichever.

In the immortal cadence of Foghorn Leghorn...”Shame on you sir! I say! Why I never...!”

Great job on the story. Covered all the bases. That makes it a home run.

And very much appreciate the initial credits to JB44.

Nice

Decent revenge. Fucking assholes all of them.

Five Stars

I like the plot idea, but agree completely with @Randomcarrot. The writer lies to the reader early on. A couple of examples:

From page 1: "That is why I was flying to Houston, to discuss how many nuts, bolts and washers NASA is going to need for their upcoming program to go back to the moon. This contract could be worth $250 million over the next ten years."

This contrasts with page 2, where he writes "Of course, there was no meeting with NASA and no contract."

In addition, on the first page we have him notice a young lady watching him, then coming to sit beside him. After she introduces herself as one of his wife's bridesmaids, he writes "I looked at her a little closer, and it started to come back to me now." That isn't true as the later story reveals that he already had the private investigator's report and knew who she was and that she was there to seduce him. The earlier reference to spidey sense tingling as he wondered about industrial espionage was also untrue as he knew exactly what was happening.

The writer can't very well hide things from the reader when writing in first person using the voice of someone who knows the truth. That early part pretty much has to be told in third person or by a narrator who doesn't have knowledge of all of the facts and so can honestly recount facts to the reader that leave an impression without being dishonest.

Nothing more satisfying than a well-singed bitch.

Felt rushed towards the end.

1 star -- just plain boring and more like a JPB story