The review for a story Temporary insanity - a short story by
What strikes me odd is Susan’s motive for the murder. The story doesn’t explain what is it that her husband has done to deserve to be killed.
She couldn't believe what Peter had done this time and it was going to take a lot of explaining to get out of this one.
To me, this is a hint that Peter was unfaithful. However, I don’t understand why the author couldn’t just spell it out. Why keep this information as such a mystery?
In the same way, it was odd why the author didn’t offer the content of Peter’s monologue to reader’s attention. This would have given a reader an explanation why Susan actually committed a murder. Following what the story has given me, I don’t see that the murder was committed in the state of affect, because of jealousy, for example. It looked very much like a premeditated murder; especially considering how cold and calculative Susan’s behavior was after the murder.
Then what were her reasons to for killing her husband? To get the house and insurance money? Wouldn’t she be able to get at least half of it as her divorce settlement? Maybe she hated her husband because he was abusing her or something like that… There is nothing in the story that explains this.
To me, it looked that the author got so concentrated on the mechanism of the murder that he completely missed thinking of the motives. For a story to be complete the author needs to fill all those gaps. Otherwise, the story sounds juvenile.
