The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

Did the opening paragraph of a recent read really grab your attention? Share it here. Be sure to add the title, author, and link to the book.

China Trade by S. J. Rozan

I jumped a pothole in Canal Street as I dashed between honking cars and double-parked ones. A cab driver trying to beat the light screeched on his brakes and cursed me, luckily in a language I don’t speak. Pinballing along the sidewalk from fish seller to fruit merchant to sidewalk mah jongg game, I charged up Canal and down Mulberry. I pushed my way through the throngs of shoppers, who’re mostly local this time of year because Christmas is over but we’re coming up on Chinese New Year. I hopped curbs, squirmed sideways, and tried not to elbow old ladies as I raced to the old school building on Mulberry opposite the park. When I finally got there I stopped. I drew in sharp, cold air until my heart slowed and my breathing was back to normal. Then I calmly climbed the stairs and rang the bell.
I hate to be late.

I can just picture that part of China Town!! Flash from my past. I just might have to read this one! (I see it's one of a series... do they need to be read in order?)

China Tradeis the first in the series and I have not finished it yet but I do see the usual beginnings of character relationships which will probably continue. She wrote 6 or 7 in this series and then stopped for about 6 years and a new one was released last year. So far so good.

I don't know that this is a mystery but the other day I read the first sentence of The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver and I knew i had to read it.

"I have been afraid of putting air in a tire since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the Standard Oil sign."

I had just come from filling my tire with air. Now I find that I drove off without putting the cap back on. Hope that's not real important.

Jan wrote: "I don't know that this is a mystery but the other day I read the first sentence of The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver and I knew i had to read it.

"I have been afrai..."

I just Mooched this one... looks really good. Are you enjoying it?

I just picked it up on tuesday and haven't had a chance to get into it yet.

Deadly Codes: A Gallagher Novel
JP O'Donnell

Sometimes a simple decision can change everything.

The door to Dr. Hannibal Lecter's memory palace is in the darkness at the center of his mind and it has a latch that can be found by touch alone. This curious portal opens on immense and well-lit spaces, early baroque, and corridors and chambers rivaling in number those of the Topkapi Museum.

Hannibal Rising
Thomas Harris

The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran

A common bat on the other side of the world elects to sink its rabid fangs, and one's cozy existence is finished.

Death by Chocolate by G. A. McKevett.

“You’re really not too bad-looking, you know, for a chubby old broad.”

Savannah resisted the urge to growl and bite her companion as the hair on the back of her neck bristled. “I beg your pardon, sir,” she said in the sweetest, most demure imitation of a Southern bell – a belle who might feed you your teeth after a back-handed compliment like that.

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

"I was lying dead in the churchyard. An hour had crept by since the mourners had said their last sad farewells."

The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett



A human body starts to decompose four minutes after death. Once the encapsulation of life, it now undergoes it final metamorphoses. It begins to digest itself, Cells dissolve from the inside out. Tissue turns to liquid, then to gas. No longer animate, the body becomes an immovable feast for other organisms. Bacteria first, then insects. Flies. Eggs are laid, then hatch. The larvae feed on the nutrient-rich broth, and they migrate. They leave the body in an orderly fashion, following each other in a neat procession that always heads south. South-east or south-west sometimes, but never north. No one knows why.

Ah, that "nutrient-rich broth ..."

Zoo Station by David Downing



There were two hours left of 1938. In Danzig it had been snowing on and off all day, and a gang of children was enjoying a snowball fight in front of the grain warehouses which lined the old waterfront. John Russell paused to watch them for a few moments, then walked on up the cobbled street toward the blue and yellow lights.

The Sweden Bar was far from crowded, and those few faces that turned his way weren't exactly brimming over with festive spirit. In fact, most of them looked like they'd rather be somewhere else.

The Third Man by Graham Greene



This is just the first sentence of the first paragraph but still good.

"One never knows when the blow may fall."

What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely, spending hours and days stupor-deep in lies, and then turn back to her holding out the lover's ultimate Möbius strip: But I only did it because I love you so much.

By Tana French, In the Woods

Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek.The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses found a kneeling rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling by rope from snagged limbs, venison left to the weather for two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavor, sweeten the meat to the bone.

By Daniel Woodrell in Winter's Bone

"The Pig Did It" by Joseph Caldwell

Aaron McCloud had come to Ireland, to County Kerry, to the shores of the Western Sea, so he could, in solitary majesty, feel sorry for himself. The domesticated hills would be his comfort, the implacable sea his witness. Soon he would arrive at the house of his aunt, high on a headland fronting the west, and his anguish could begin in earnest.

I'm liking this so far...

-SharonM

Vince wrote: "Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek.The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty gleam from low ..."

Wow, that's quite the opening paragraph.

The movie of this was a real gripper.

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "Vince wrote: "Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek.The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty g..."

That's how I heard of the book - reading the movie review. Here in Chicago I think it played in fewer theaters than "...Dragon Tattoo". The movie "Ride with the Devil" was based on one of Woodrell's books as well. I've got to read more of his work, just not too quickly; don't want to burn out on a good thing.

Same in Boston I think. I'd seen a review on At the Movies and made it a point to go fast. It's a must-rent, Vince. Although, good as it is, it may pale against the book.

Vince wrote: "
That's how I heard of the book - reading the movie review. Here in Chicago I think it played in fewer theaters than "...Dragon Tattoo". ..."

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "Same in Boston I think. I'd seen a review on At the Movies and made it a point to go fast. It's a must-rent, Vince. Although, good as it is, it may pale against the book.

Vince wrote: "
That's ..."

It's playing at one theater in a neighborhood with very little parking and one in a suburb in the next county. Trailers look good, but Woodrell's use of language is pretty amazing.

The steam pig by James McClure

"For an undertaker George Henry Abbott was a sad man. He let his job get on top of him. He let it keep him awake nights. He made mistakes."

Previously out of print, this is the first in the Kramer and Zondi series set in apartheid-era South Africa

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff



The scream that pierced the dull yellow November sky was preternaturally high-pitched. Its sound carried effortlessly, echoing throught a neighborhood of Queen Anne Victorians into the barren woods beyond, fading only as it decended toward the Hudson River. Those who heard the sound mistook it for that of an animal - perhaps the call of a screech owl, maybe the shrill cry of a loon. No one believed it to be human.

The Last Good Kiss

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

James wrote: "The Last Good Kiss

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint outside of Sonoma, ..."

I just read this in 2010, after having heard of it for years. What a classic.

"Father Azetti was tempted.
Standing on the steps of the parish church, fingering a rosary,
he gazed across the empty piazza in the direction of his favorite trattoria--and looked at his watch. It was 1:39 in the afternoon. And he was starving."

The Genesis Code, a medical / religious thriller by John Case with murder, international conspiracies, mystery, and a race to save the "last" mother.
GREAT page-turner!

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

"Red Harvest," by Dashell Hammet

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "James wrote: "The Last Good Kiss

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint outside..."

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "James wrote: "The Last Good Kiss

I agree. I like all of Crumley's books, but The Last Good Kiss is one of the really great reads in crime fiction.

Heartstone

The churchyard was peaceful in the summer afternoon. Twigs and branches lay strewn across the gravel path, torn from the trees by the gales which had struck the country in that stormy June of 1545. In London we had escaped lightly, with only a few chimneypots gone, but the winds had wreaked havoc in the north. People spoke of hailstones there as large as fists, with the shapes of faces on them. But tales become more dramatic as they spread, as any lawyer knows.

James wrote: "The Last Good Kiss

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint outside of Sonoma, ..."

Sentences that include "when" in them, especially first sentences, tend to be very strong and draw the reader into a narrative with ease. I haven't read this book, but I think I'll put it on my list.

George Pelecanos always fires off a great opening in his books. This one is from . (not the first paragraph but still an opener)

A rock gets pushed at the top of the hill, and it begins to roll, and then it doesn’t matter who did the pushing. What matters is that nothing can stop it. What matters is the damage done. So how it started, I suppose, is insignificant. Because what sticks now is how it ended: with the sudden blast and smoke of automatic weapons, and the low manic moan of those who were about to die.

Three Seconds (from the advance readers copy)

An hour to midnight.

It was spring, but darker than he thought it would be. Probably because of the water down below, almost black, a membrane covering what seemed to be bottomless.

He didn’t like boats, or perhaps it was the sea he couldn’t fathom. He always shivered when the wind blew as it did now and Swinoujscie slowly disappeared. He would stand with his hands gripped tightly round the handrail until the house were no longer houses, just small squares that disintegrated into the darkness that grew around him.

He was twenty-nine years old and frightened.

Here's a great opening paragraph:

Petra's letters should have warned me. Those secret, smiling letters written in an overbold hand with violet ink on pale green perfumed paper, sealed in green envelopes. They should have been warning enough for anyone. And the house should have warned me. The minute I stepped through the doorway at 13 French Street, I sensed something wrong--something I couldn't nail down. But she closed the door before I had a chance to run. So, you see, it was already too late. Only I should have run anyway....

13 French Street by Gil Brewer.

Not the first paragraph...but the first page-and-a-half of East of Desolation by Jack Higgins snared me. I picked up the paperback in the bookstore and started reading it. When I finished the 7th paragraph I headed straight for the checkout...

Merrill Heath
Alec Stover Mysteries

THE LONG GOODBYE By Raymond Chandler

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers

stan wrote: "THE LONG GOODBYE By Raymond Chandler

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers"


Raymond Chandler paints pictures with words. I love his books.

Everybody lies.

Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.

A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows this. Even the jury knows this. They come into the building knowing they will be lied to. They take their seats in the box and agree to be lied to.

The trick if you are sitting at the defense table is to be patient. To wait. Not for just any lie. But for the one you can grab on to and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. You then use that blade to rip the case open and spill its guts out on the floor.

That's my job, to forge the blade. To sharpen it. To use it without mercy or conscience. To be the truth in a place where everybody lies.

The Brass Verdict (Mickey Haller, #2)
Michael Connelly
(My first read of the year)

Steele didn't want to move. Not yet. There was a tiny buzz outside his window and then the tap, tap of winged bodies against glass. He smiled at these little sounds and then quickly tuned them out. Crisp patterns and images formed on the inside of his eyelids: a giant pink gongue, an eyeless face, wooden chessmen, a flame. These images and more washed over his consciousness and crashed like waves against his intellect. They threatened to overwhelm him until he forced a single image to the forefront. A demonic bird-like creature with a single three clawed leg, long ice-pick fangs, catlike eyes, and a tongue extending out from an open beak the brightest shade of blue he had ever seen.

The Perfect Canvas
Kevin Adkisson

No One could say why it was called Pine Ridge. Wasn't any pines around that Chris could see. Just a group of one-story, L-shaped, red-brick buildings set on a flat dirt-and-mud clearing, surrounded by a fence topped with a razor wire. Beyond the fence, woods. Oak, maple, wild dogwood, and weed trees, but no pines. Somewhere back in those woods, the jail they had for girls.

The Way Home
George Pelecanos

Stan picked a great selection:

<
The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers>>

It's one of many examples of why Chandler is considered a master.

To message by M, I agree with you about R.Chandler If you want to know about old L.A. he's definitely the one to read. My favorite opening line is and always has been Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly again from of course,Daphne DuMaurier. Lucy @12:45 on9-28-11

Neal Shackford lay unconscious on the beer-tacky linoleum floor of American Legion Post No. 95, the local watering hole in Lyman, Maine.

Giving It Away

What do you think about this one?
The demon glared menacingly at him from under the font as he entered the tiny
church, its plaster fangs dripping with malice.


Just reviewed this book

Carol/Bonadie wrote: "Vince wrote: "Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek.The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty g..."

yes the movie was wonderful

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it. It's the Day blood. Something's wrong with it. I was never a good little girl, and I got worse after the murders. Little Orphan Libby grew up sullen and boneless, shuffled around a group of lesser relatives--second cousins and great-aunts and friends of friends--stuck in a series of mobile homes or rotting ranch houses all across Kansas. Me going to school in my dead sisters' hand-me-downs: Shirts with mustardy armpits. Pants with baggy bottoms, comically loose, held on with a raggedy belt cinched to the farthest hole. In class photos my hair was always crooked--barrettes hanging loosely from strands, as if they were airborne objects caught in the tangles--and I always had bulging pockets under my eyes, drunk-landlady eyes. Maybe a grudging curve of the lips where a smile should be. Maybe.

from Dark Places by Gillian Flynn