Review: Exceptional clarity of characterizations; nice plot surprises.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2012
I "purchased" this small ebook via a free offer, so honestly, I didn't have much invested.  It was either I would like it, or I wouldn't.This is a review, not a story, so upfront, yes, I did like the three short stories in this collection.  And they've continued to linger in my mind, in a good way.I'll say first why I didn't give them a five star rating though.First, the characters are kinda stereotypical, though I'll address this a bit further when I talk about the author's notes at the end of the book.  They sound and look and are described in almost a 40s B movie manner.However, the clarity of the characterizations, is amazingly brought to visual-life for me, and I've been both a visual and verbal artist since the 70s.  So that is important to me.  I saw and felt facial expressions, looks, ways of moving, in all the main characters, and many of the supporting ones.Second, because the characters were so vividly drawn, and even though the story lines included interesting twists and strangely pleasantly surprising endings, I felt I'd been teased with snippets, when the quality of the work said, "longer!"I wanted more.  More of the both the stories and the characters.I'd like to know how the cop and the crook developed after the short story ending.  I want to know how the lady in the second short came out in the years ahead.  And I really wondered about the postman in the last short.What did these fictional characters with so much life end up doing!It could well be that the ending with the characters' roundedness appearing so richly at the end, was more powerful because of the more traditional story beginnings.  I don't know.And third, and finally, in terms of qualifiers for a five star rating, I felt the lady in the second short, because I kinda guessed the plot line, and because of the intenseness of her situation, really needed more time.  Meaning more pages I believe.So really, much of the problem I had with this work, is I basically felt these characters, and stories, could be much longer.  Or phrased from my viewpoint, I wanted to enjoy their lives a bit longer and more fully.A final note, the author has an author's notes section at the end, which negates them becoming spoilers, and this is a feature I enjoyed a great deal.  Matthew, the author, indicates this is something he intends to do (or does) in each of his work.  If so, I highly encourage him to do so.  Interesting info for me as both a reader and a writer.In this section, I realized that his characterization-styling was intention and conscious.  For me, that means he knew what he was doing, and not "just" writing that way.And as a final final note, I had this ebook on both my phone's and computer's reading apps, and was able to just take my time from either device which happened handy, and really just took my time over a couple weeks getting to each story and the notes.  Nice.