Condoms and Pantyhose by qhml1

Review by Jim S   [other reviews by Jim S]

Reviewed:

qhml1 writes what I like to think of as thinking man's cheating wife story. This one is no exception. It starts hard and ends soft (almost maudlin) and the twist in the middle is gentle, which caught me unaware. Like all of his other stories in this genre, it's fast, witty and crisp. It moves along like a quick stepping speed walker.

Because it's relatively short (only 85k), character development necessarily suffers. But there is enough time for both main characters to be properly fleshed out.

Dialogue. This is qhml1's strong suit. No wasted moves of any kind. Every syllable is necessary and I didn't see any that should not have been there, i.e. the man is not wordy at all but still manages to say one whole helluva lot.

The story. This is a fresh take on the overworked theme of the cheating wife. I don't know how many different ways such a story can be told but the author sure found one.

Technical. Superb as his stories always are. Grammar, punctuation and spelling (mostly) are excellent. No homophonic errors. No homonymic errors either. The only negative is the proofreading errors which seem to crop up in the final quarter of the story. Almost like he was rushing.

qhml1 is one of the authors at SOL whose stories leave me feeling good after I've read them. This one is just an all around good story that's well worth reading even short as it is.