Review: Urban Fiction Includes Murder Mystery!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 8, 2013
With the raw language of urban fiction, 3:53 explores the intense self-analysis of teens testing their limits on drugs, sexuality, friendship, bullying, abuse, love... and murder... Using a series of short scenes, thoughts, essays, the author takes readers directly into the intimacy of four acquaintances, one of whom is a psychopath...Corey had been called Fat Boy for so long that most people didn't even know his name, even after he had visited Subway 3 times a day, like the guy on TV and was now not overweight... Abused by his father, as each morning he used a police taser to get him out of bed, Fat boy enjoyed payback by going after anybody he viewed as weaker than he was now.Becky had a hard life with her mother, mainly since everybody in town knew she used drugs and would do anything to get it! Fortunately, they lived in the same trailer park with Sam and his Dad and Sam was her best friend. She spent most nights with him in his trailer since his Dad was on the road most of the time. They'd watch TV, talk, and sometimes more...Sam had recognized his own sexual orientation, wanting another whose beauty blinded him, but not knowing how to approach him, he finds writing a screenplay between two men a release of his hidden desires.{This screenplay is set off as a story within the story} It is scary to risk being called names by school mates, while girls may be looking for more than he can provide...But one day when he got home from school, he realizes he accidentally left that screenplay in homeroom! Fat Boy knew he had a gold mine when he found and read it...And when he came upon the writer and his idol one day in the woods, he started reading the play out-loud... But before that Sam and Dylan had been using drugs and sharing more with each other...in fact, Dylan admitted he was having problems with stress, with his parents, football, and feeling like he was pretending to be somebody else other than he was...Caught in a life, living on the streets, finding wherever they could get it results in lies, secrets, stolen moments and a world of pain...One of them couldn't take what was happening. And when the time was right, death came to one of the four...and then another...And then there was none...This is short but so intense that you may get lost and not know how to put the pieces together, do realize that the screen play is separate as outlined in the contents. This is not for everybody.But if you can deal with the street language of today, please try this urban fiction. The writing is excellent. The story mimics what you read in the newspaper, not ever knowing, though, what actually happens to the victims. Be prepared. The language is indeed raw. The results obsessive, real, and illustrative of what some of our youth live in on a daily basis...If we don't like them telling the facts as they see them... Tough! That's the genre...and everybody has just as much right to the freedom of speech as anybody else. Even when we don't like it.But be sure to read the pain behind these stories as well. Because it is there, waiting for you to read and say that...you understand...GABixlerReviews