“Five weeks after Kirsten Waller’s body was found in a clifftop cottage in Cornwall, Grace Hobden cleared away the lunch, checked to make sure her three children were playing on the climbing frame at the bottom of the garden, then went indoors to murder her husband.” - “The Murder Bird”, Joanna Hines
A good first line should get you in straight away. Like that one.
Here are a few more of my favourites.
1. I opened my eyes to see the rat taking a piss in my coffee mug. - “Crooked Little Vein”, Warren Ellis.
Yeah, I hate it when this happens, too.
2. We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge. - “Darker Than Amber”, John D MacDonald.
Brilliant. Any sentence that leaves you thinking: “What???” has to be good.
3. It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad. - “The Day of the Jackal”, Frederick Forsyth.
One from the master of the craft.
4. She was ten years old, but knew enough to wipe clean the handle of the bloody kitchen knife. - “A Bitter Taste”, Annie Hauxwell.
Never read this book but I love this as an opening line. The child is clearly the result of solid parenting. Wiping fingerprints off murder weapons should be one of the first thing you teach your kids.
5. The night of my mother’s funeral, Linda Dawson cried on my shoulder, put her tongue in my mouth and asked me to find her husband. - “The Wrong Kind of Blood”, Declan Hughes.
I’m sure we’ve all been to funerals like this. But there’s always room for one more.
6. When the car stopped rolling, Parker kicked out the windshield and crawled through onto the wrinkled hood, Glock first. - “Backflash”, Richard Stark.
Stark, AKA Donald Westlake. He wrote some of the funniest books I ever read, too.
7. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. - “The Last Good Kiss”, James Crumley.
One of Crumley’s classic opening lines. The man took the baton from Gardner and Elmore Leonard
8. I sat in the back pew and watched the only woman I would ever love marry another man. - “Six Years”, Harlan Coben.
One sentence and you already know so much about the backstory – and where the plot may be headed.
9. Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon, with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat. - “Until Gwen”, Dennis Lehane
In a few lines Lehane gives you a full-blown history of the main character and a thumbnail of the man who made him like he is. And you feel for him. And it’s kind of funny. Brilliant.
10. The half-naked woman had come from the penthouse– she just hadn’t bothered to use the elevator. Instead, she stepped off the balcony, eleven stories up. - “Privileged Witness”, Rebecca Forester
Two sentences, and you get the picture.
11. I hadn’t killed anyone in almost four years. But all good things come to an end, eventually. - “The Detachment”, Barry Eisler.
You can see where this is going straight away. But Eisler’s captured the voice from the get-go.
12. The last camel collapsed at noon. - “The Key to Rebecca”, Ken Follett.
A nice economical opening. You know pretty much where the story’s set, what’s happened leading up to this point and what the problem is. All in six words.
13. Moving a guy as big as Keeve wasn’t easy. It was like trying to wrestle a king-size mattress off a waterbed. So they buried him close to the house. - “Make Me”, Lee Child.
Burying bodies is hard work. I always think that murder squad detectives should cultivate physiotherapists as confidential informants.
14. If there’s a maniac or an ax murderer within a hundred-mile radius, he–or she–will come straight to me, Clare Westbrook, hapless attorney at law, like steel filings to a magnet. - “Never Look Back”, Linda Lael Miller.
I love a touch of black humour. This got me straight away.
15. They threw me off the haytruck about noon. - “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, James M. Cain.
A classic beginning to a classic novel.
16. My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. - “The Lovely Bones”, Ann Sebold
Immediately you know this is going to be a different kind of ‘dunnit’. Susie already knows who; but how does she tell her family and the police, now that she’s dead?
Charlie looked up at the dead man on the cross. His breath formed clouds on the still morning air. He had to squint because of the glare from the pointed Gothic window.
How the hell did he get up there?
“Lucifer Falls effortlessly merges a shocking serial murderer novel with a police procedural dripping with authenticity.
Packed full of characters you genuinely care about, when DI Charlie George, a richly drawn North London cop, goes toe-to-toe with the deranged killer I didn’t read the last few chapters, I devoured them.
An absolute triumph.” – M.W. Craven, bestselling author of ‘The Puppet Show’ and ‘Body Breaker’ … continue reading
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