It's a crime

Quite a few stories that we see entered into the Global Short Story Competition are on a crime theme.

Like all stories, whether they be novels or short stories, they need a good opening line and I came upon the excellent Detectives Beyond Borders site which asked its readers for good openings. The suggestions included:

“Inspector Salvo Montalbano could immediately tell that it was not going to be his day the moment he opened the shutters of his bedroom window." Andrea Camilleri, The Voice of the Violin;

"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write." Ruth Rendell, A Judgement in Stone

"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 Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

"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. “ Joanna Hines, The Murder Bird

Me? Well, this is the start to the first crime novel I had published - A Flicker in the Night. Given that the idea of an opening is to grab the reader by the throat, I hope it did its job.

“There are some faces that never fade from the memory, some crimes so vile that they can never be forgotten and some men whose names simply cannot be forgotten. Not now. Not ever. Reginald Morris is one such man.”
If you want to find out more about Detectives Beyond Borders, and read more of their excellent comments, go to www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com

John Dean