Stories of Arda Home Page
About Us News Resources Login Become a member Help Search

Murder Most Foul  by Larner 5 Review(s)
BranwynReviewed Chapter: 21 on 12/1/2011
Avrandahil has a strange idea of his duties as a coroner (which seems to be the role he filled). Malthor made me laugh--he really didn't want to give up that rare book. I liked how though he was probably too afraid to openly defy the authorities, he still did his best to preserve the records.

Author Reply: Frank Peretti isn't quite as bad as Avrandahil, although he does appear to be convinced that his job is to support the state's case as much as possible rather than to truly determine what happened. And to do this he's proved he will lie like a rug.

It's hard for a bibliophile to give up such a text as this! I KNOW, considering how I love those books that come into my hands!

SunnyReviewed Chapter: 21 on 9/8/2011
I see things are starting to fall apart for those corrupt guards, Master Fendril and Enelmir. And it seems that Avrandahil is starting to feel pangs of anxiety, too! Considering the whole f.., ahem, tangled situation, I suspect that is about time! And there is some justice here that is very long overdue!!



Author Reply: Oh, yes--things are not going particularly well for them. And you have managed to express well what we who have followed the real case have felt for a LONG time. And indeed there is justice overdue here--justice that Aragorn will see leveled. Thanks so, Sunny!

Elena TirielReviewed Chapter: 21 on 9/7/2011
Oh, my heavens, Larner! What a knot to be unraveled! Even though we know whodunnit, it's fascinating to see the visitors chip away at the layers of lies, errors, and pretenses to get at the truth.

I must admit that, reading this in all one go as I have (I plead a broken leg, which has distracted me from proper fanfic reading....), I'm having a bit of a problem keeping all the character names straight. But I did finally recognize the jerk from your other story, who gave Hurin's future wife such fits. (Oh, how I loved to hate that character!)

Well, I can't wait to see how this story continues to unfold, Larner! Very nicely done!

- Barbara

Author Reply: A broken leg? Oh, dear, Barbara! Yes, Fendril is very much an ass, and his continued odd mixture of foolishness and slyness will be made even plainer as we go through the remaining chapters. And Aragorn will be well warned of his peculiarities, you'll note!

Yes, the characters are growing in number, aren't they? That's a novel for you! And as many have counterparts in the real world, it's made it more complicated for me not to use the real names in the story or to use the characters' names in my comments in the discussion boards! Fiondil has had a laugh or two at me over the growing confusion in my own mind as this story was sent to him for betaing!

We finally approach the last few chapters....

Szepilona10Reviewed Chapter: 21 on 9/7/2011
Aragorn's going to have a lot of information to sort through! Good chapter! (and it was nice and long too!)
God Bless!

~Szepilona10~

Author Reply: Oh, yes--LOTS of information to sort through, although I suspect he will do very well at it. And this chapter just wouldn't stop!

SReviewed Chapter: 21 on 9/7/2011
Your story reminds me of another travesty of justice in the U.S.

For those who may question how easily a young child or those of somewhat limited comprehension such as Garestil can give answers or confessions crafted by someone with a hidden agenda to implicate others in a crime, go to the following site:

http://werme.8m.net/wenatchee.html

In Wenatchee, WA in the '90s, an overzealous police officer with the help of social workers implicated child day care workers, parents and others in a child sex ring. The children were convinced to believe that the truly bizarre and physically impossible things that they testified to had actually happened. Many lives were ruined and there are still people today, like the couple of Destrier, who doubt the innocence of the accused.

S

Author Reply: Oh, I'm well, well aware of the Wenatchee "sex ring" case, too, and how the officer would not allow the first girl to say no one had ever molested her, insisting she tell him her "secrets" until at last she began making up "secrets" just to placate him. And do you know of Paul Ingram, a former sheriff's deputy from Thurston County, who was coerced into "confessing" to having "suppressed memories" of ritually sexually molesting his own daughter, sending him to prison for a crime that never even happened? In his case a psychologist who'd been working with his mentally ill adolescent daughter helped the girl "recover" memories of such abuse, complete with times and dates and places where her father had allegedly taken her--times and dates that it proved he'd actually been on duty either at headquarters or about the county in most cases; he's still in prison.

Or the Swanns from the U district in Seattle who were also sent to prison for allegedly molesting their three-year-old daughter and their neighbor's child on the word of a mentally ill new worker at the children's day-care facility who insisted that the children had told her of such abuse. An overzealous female prosecutor sent them to prison for fourteen years each, and they didn't learn until after they were behind bars that first the woman whose accusation sent them there had been fired from other jobs before taking her one-day stint at their daughter's day-care for making false accusations of sexual abuse against parents of other children; then their daughter's grandparents took the child to the best pediatric gynecologist in the state, who told them that none of the acts they'd been alleged to have committed had actually happened to the child. They pled innocent, and the prosecutor, intending to prove how apparently decent individuals can hide a dark side, brought in the neighbor's daughter, an exceedingly suggestible three-year-old child, to testify against them. They not only spent fourteen years in state prison for a crime that had never happened and suffered unspeakable abuse at the hands of their fellow prisoners for what they'd been accused of doing, but they could not have contact with their daughter or their newborn child who was secretly born and given into the care of relatives just before they were imprisoned.

Oh, I'm well aware of injustice in our home state.

Return to Chapter List