Entertaining if a little cookie cutter.

Sort of just an off the cuff review, Just going to highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses overall.
First mistake right off the bat; starting a the first sentence with the words ‘dazed and confused’ is just going to get that Led Zeppelin song stuck in my head the whole chapter long haha.
No but in all seriousness, the opening is good, some of the description is a little cheesey, to the point of parody. I always find it’s a tough middle ground with similies and metaphorical description in any way. You either make it too whimsical so it seems silly or too dry so it’s boring or unimaginative, it’s tough to get them where you want which is the middle. Otherwise it’s just cringe inducing.
Although I thought the opening was good, gives people a little taste of whats to come and gives a little bit of action and suspense which is exactly what you want when you’re about to tediously unravel paragraph after unbroken paragraph of spoonfed exposition at people at people haha.
Honestly, it’s not that bad but the paragraphs are just way too long, you just have these long monoliths of unbroken text that it becomes a burden to read. I found myself wanting to skim a lot of it and when I did I heard this name called ‘Cindy’. And I was reading back like ‘who’s cindy, weren’t we just talking about his father who killed himself?;
Then I searched for ‘Cindy’ and her name is only mentioned twice in that whole chapter, so we’re talking about his dead father then dead wife (I’m guessing) is just tossed on for good measure. I’m sure it’ll be explained later but highlighting it out of the blue then dropping it just as suddenly was strange since it goes out of its way to explain the dead father thing. Which I sort of didn’t like either, the suicide note was to me posed as a mystery then solved in the next parahraph. Essentially I think you should have swapped his wife and father, mention the father and don’t explain it, then explain the wife.
The writing is great though, very polished, a few mistakes here and there, a wrong word used, nothing that an edit wont pick up but something spellcheck always misses. The dialogue is a bit stiff but serviceable.
It almost seems like a japanse interpretation of noir. A little silly, a little wet, which I like. Some of the description and the dialogue seems like something out of a good point and click adventure.
As a fan of murder and serial killers, the murder is a little boring. I like a little theatre a la Dexter. But it’s realistic, although everything you’re mentioning is not something you wouldn’t find in any generic cop show of which there are a billion.
Overall though, it’s well presented and fairly enjoyable but suffers tonally and it gets a little tedious with the way it’s laid out. A fun read I could see occupying fans of the genre.

The header image is just a random photo I found when I googled ‘retribution’ haha. If you wanna check out the actual book, it’s all up for free on Inkitt of all places. Link below.

Retribution