Ugh I wrote this up and then my browser crashed so I'm gonna try to repeat what I was saying.
Overall, Chapter 1 was pretty good. It started off a little slow, but it got interesting once the detective was investigating the crime scene. To be honest, it wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad, either. It felt like you had some unnecessary filling in there that sorta got in the way of the main story.
Anyway, here's something I need to comment on:
"This is the place. Apartment thirty two 'C' the residence of Rena de Leon," he said watching the detective's eyes widen. "Is something the matter, detective?"
First of all, "thirty two" should be "thirty-two". There's supposed to be a dash in there, but that's not what I originally picked this out for.
There's supposed to be a comma between "he said" and "watching the detective's eyes widen". If you say it (or at least when I say it) there should be a pause in between there. The comma is also used to separate the two verbs, "said" and "watching". You did that throughout the entire thing, and it should really be "he said, watching the detective's eyes widen."
Also you used "said" too much, in my opinion. You shouldn't be afraid of using "said" (I actually know someone like that), but you need to vary it up a little. Ultimately you should try to eliminate those "speaking verbs" as much as possible and just go from the quote to the action. Something like this:
"This is the place. Apartment thirty two 'C' the residence of Rena de Leon." He was surprised when he saw the detective's eyes widen. "Is something the matter, detective?"
Not only does it give a little more information about what's going on (adding the "surprised"), but you eliminated the repetition of the "said". That's mostly for places where you use pronouns, since they're generally less important than nouns.
And now pronouns.
He gave a short jolt as he snapped out of his blood crazed daze. He spun around and starred grimly at the guardsman. He shot back, “What?! What did you say?”
You use "He" three times in three sentences. Also I wasn't entirely sure who was jolted at first. You can easily remedy this by mixing it up (adding nouns once in a while) and by using different nouns. IE:
The detective gave a short jolt as he snapped out of his blood-crazed daze. He spun around and stared grimly at the guardsman. Then he shot back, "What?! What did you say?"
Probably not the best fix but you'll hopefully get the idea. Also notice I added the dash in "blood-crazed" and you had "starred" instead of "stared".
Most of the stuff I pointed out should be worked on and most of it you can probably find just by re-reading it a time or two. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to reading more. :wink:
