Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Opening lines

I haven't done an opening lines post for a while, and I've managed to leave Dave Zeltserman's excellent Small Crimes at work changing my plans to write a review. Here are some crackers:

'He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it.' Arnaldur Indridson, Silence of the Grave

'There used to be a writer by the name of Merle Miller, who wrote that people in Hollywood were always touching you - not because they like you, but because they want to see how soft you are before they eat you alive.' Steven Bochco, Death by Hollywood

'The frozen lake and the black vacuum sky and the dead man pleading for the return of his remaining days.' Adrian McKinty, Fifty Grand

'It was the sort of sound you hear in the distance and mistake for something else: a dirty steam barge puffing along the River Spree; the shunting of a slow locomotive underneath the great glass roof of Anhalter Station; the hot, impatient breath of some enormous dragon, as if one of the stone dinosaurs in Berlin's zoo had come to life and was now lumbering up Wilhelmstrasse.' Philip Kerr, If the Dead Rise Not

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rob - Oh, I always enjoy your Opening Lines posts - thanks :-).

Mack said...

Oh great, now that you have teased me with opening lines, I have more books to add to my TBR pile.

Here is one of my favorite opening lines:
"Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake."
Drive, by James Sallis

Rob Kitchin said...

Mack, thanks for that one back. I can see how these opening lines might help extend a TBR pile. Great start.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Hard to beat the Boccho one.

kathy d. said...

Loved that book by Indridason; that first sentence is hard to beat in terms of that quality which pulls the reader in immediately and makes one not let go until the last sentence has been finished.

And the book is well worth it.