Perfect Crime

Written by Jack Erickson

Narrated by Erin Bateman

A San Francisco wife plots A Perfect Crime to murder her pilandering husband by being in two places at the same time. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: RedBrick Press
• Release date: Jun 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780941397131

Reviews for Perfect Crime

[bettesbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A San Francisco wife plots to murder her philandering husband by being in two places at one time. A short story that can be read in less than an hour. I have seen this theme on TV, movies and other books. Though it is a common theme I thought it was well-written with adequate character development for a short story.

[jimmaclachlan · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn't hate this story & I think there's hope for this author. He could be a good one, so I'm going to take the time to point out what bothered me.

This was told from the first person point of view. I usually like those, but this was a guy telling the story as a girl & it just didn't ring true all the time, although it wasn't horrible - just a little off. Can't say why, though. I think this might have been better if the sexes of the characters was switched.

The setup & situation was pretty good, the motives very understandable, but the device was clunky & this is supposed to be a 'perfect' crime. That sets the bar high & the author had all the right ingredients. Unfortunately, he failed to put them together properly.

I crept back to the patio and disconnected the line from the propane tank to the grill with a pocket wrench. I slipped the round end of the paper tube onto the nozzle of the propane tank and repositioned the line just above the nozzle so it would look like it had been dislodged by an explosion.

A 'pocket wrench'? I have a quite a few wrenches, nothing I'd call a 'pocket wrench'. Using a wrench means there's no way it's going to look like an explosion repositioned anything, though. On top of that, the character thinks that taping some cardboard & paper together to make a tube to run some gas into a cracked window requires an engineering degree from 'Cal'. (Cal Tech?) Seriously? I know illiterate drunks that could deal with it as handily.

Worse, this elaborate scheme, which requires precise timing & a very long drive, relies on a 20 lb. propane gas grill tank having enough gas in it to flood a house in the winter. If it had been just the floor, that would have been weak. However the gas took a detour into the attic for some reason.
... Being heavier than air, gas would fill the laundry room and work up into the open space, filling the attic. It would creep under the door into the hallway and flow all over the house, laying a carpet of combustible fuel. The gas would seep under the bedroom door,...
That's a lot of gas to expect from something she never bothered to check. She just heard it hiss & walked away. My wife did that with a roast the other night & we ate very late after the gas ran out & I had to swap bottles.

On top of that, it's a hell of a thing to hinge all this on when the old farm house has natural gas piped in, an egotistical, owner who drops in occasionally & complains about the cost of repairs. There was a recent earthquake & an inspector was scheduled to come out later in the week. With all that, a better mechanism than a possibly empty propane tank & a big crack in a window could have been worked out. Why bother telling me all that if you're not going to use it?

She speeds down a highway at night when a ticket is the last thing she can afford.
Speeding down I-5 was critical for carrying out my time-sensitive plan; if I was five minutes late, my alibi could blow up...
And it's a 700 mile drive round trip. I count on good roads, weather, & no construction zones, but a 600 mile trip that usually takes us 10 hours (plus or minus 30 minutes depending on how we catch the continual construction) took us 12 hours this spring due to some bad weather.

The climax was rather underwhelming as well. I could have swallowed the rather large coincidence a twin sister of the murdered woman is an absent detective who suddenly shows up solving the case after several months if the evidence had been a bit stronger. The evidence is security camera footage showing our killer getting gas in a car she rented. That's not conclusive as even the cops say it 'resembles' her. No, the so called 'clincher' is the rental agent positively IDs her from a photo (Not even a photo array!) a few months later. Any decent lawyer would have her out in a New York minute & be suing for false arrest.

Worse, our killer planned all this out meticulously. She rents a second car with a fake name & signature, uses cash (requiring $1000 cash deposit) & yet doesn't use the disguise she prepared until after she rents the car? That's just hard to swallow for a 'perfect' crime.

I wanted to look up a point but found I can't read it on Calibre due to DRM. This was a free story with over 800 reviews. While the author has a dozen or so others out there, most don't even have a handful of reviews. I'd think he'd want to make his writing more accessible, not less. With this mediocre showing AND DRM, I probably won't be bothering with another by this author.