The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

"When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man."
Firebreak


This is a favorite opening line of mine. Do you have one?

I'll have to come back with one, Garret. Good idea!

"The police? Again?"

This is from my novel, "The Benefactor."

It's just been published in a Kindle edition.

Love it, John! :-)

I wish I could remember the exact words, but an opening that has stuck with me is the beginning of David Martin's Lie to Me. (I read it a long time ago and gave it away b/c it was so creepy so I can't quote the line directly.) It's starts with a guy sitting quietly "holding her hand." It becomes evident after a page or two that you have to read this line very literally.

"He sits in the woods holding her hand."

David Martin

Eww.... ;-)

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
From the Gunslinger by Stephen King, Book one of the Dark Tower series.
Awesome. Great start to an incredible series.

"I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well."

My Name Is Red

"So that's settled then, we bury her alive in the iron bridle. That'll keep her tongue still."

Company of Liars

"A human body starts to decompose four minutes after death."

The Chemistry of Death

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again".- Rebecca

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know."- The Stranger

And my FAVE:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, General Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

"No one saw him walk through the woods; no one saw what he was carrying. A modest bruden for a grown man, yet is caused him difficulty...."

The Waters Edge, Karen Fossum

"The day my grandmother exploded..."

The Crow Road, Iain Banks.

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye

"On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy." - C.J. Box, Savage Run

“The first person I met in England was a hallucination.”

HERE