Best opening paragraphs

**Sanx** · 5th July 2007, 18:00

Originally Posted by Krayy

Sounds like Christopher Brookmyre's style. As a guess, "A big boy did it and ran away"?

Close...

Originally Posted by ManDownUnder

"The house stood on the edge of a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It stood on its own and looked out over a broad spread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means - it was about thirty years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye."

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

**Krayy** · 5th July 2007, 18:03

Originally Posted by Macktheknife

The Sacred art of stealing, Chris someoneorother.

Arseholes...this has been grating on me all the way home....

What's the damn point of googling the text then posting half a fricking solution..."Chris Somoneorother"...if you'd ever read any of his books you'd remember his f***g name and not ruin the solution of the post for the rest of us.

You'd probably say that it's probably up to the initial poster to say "No Googling bastards allowed", but I would suggest that it be implied rather than requested.

And if you want to prove that you have read the book, answer these questions:

1) How many robberies were in the book and where were they?

2) What was the significance of the colours green and blue in the escape plan from the 1st robbery?

3) What was meant to be and actually was in the object of the last robbery?

4) What was Angeliques nickname at school?

**Macktheknife** · 5th July 2007, 18:44

Originally Posted by Krayy

Arseholes...this has been grating on me all the way home....

Jeezus dude calm down, maybe you need a holiday or something.

**Sanx** · 5th July 2007, 20:31

Originally Posted by Krayy

1) How many robberies were in the book and where were they?

2) What was the significance of the colours green and blue in the escape plan from the 1st robbery?

3) What was meant to be and actually was in the object of the last robbery?

4) What was Angeliques nickname at school?

1) Several alluded to, but only two detailed. One in a bank, one in an art museum, both in Glasgow.

2) Rangers and Celtic shirts.

3) Was meant to be a sculpture containing several kilos of Columbia's finest. It actually contained several kilos of shit.

4) Many nicknames, but mainly 'chocolate drop'.

Fantasic book, guys - go read it. And then the other nine he's written.

**ManDownUnder** · 6th July 2007, 09:38

Originally Posted by Sanx

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

OOOOOH YEAH!!!!!!!

**Beemer** · 6th July 2007, 11:16

I have another Peanuts one in the same vein as Big Dave's, with Snoopy typing a story:

"The light mist turned to rain.
The rain turned to snow.
The story turned to boring."

I also have one with Lucy reading one of Snoopy's stories:

"I just can't believe how stupid your stories are! In fact I can't see anything good at all about your writing!"
His response is:
"I have neat margins..."

**peasea** · 6th July 2007, 15:31

Originally Posted by Sanx

If, like me, you pick up a book in a book store and read the back, then read the first page then you'll appreciate the art of a good opening paragraph. So, what's the best one you've seen?

My favourite:

"Was there anything quite so under-rated in this shallow, plastic, global-corporate, tall-skinny-latte, kiddy-meal-and-a-toy, united-colours-of-fuck-you-too world, than a good old-fashioned, no-frills, retail blow job?"

The second paragraph's as good:

"It was one of the very few consumer transactions left in which you really did get what you paid for, no more and no less. No packaging, no marketing, no fake smiles, no on-the-door greeters, no aspirational lifestyle kudos; just functional, dispassionate cock-sucking for a pre-agreed flat fee."

Bling for the first person that recognises the book...

Noddy meets Big Ears?

**Skyryder** · 6th July 2007, 18:16

"It was one of the very few consumer transactions left in which you really did get what you paid for, no more and no less. No packaging, no marketing, no fake smiles, no on-the-door greeters, no aspirational lifestyle kudos; just functional, dispassionate cock-sucking for a pre-agreed flat fee."

Sounds a bit like the Happy Hooker by Xavier Holland. I think that was her name. Somit like that.

Skyryder.

**Sanx** · 6th July 2007, 22:56

Another classic opening chapter from Mr Brookmyre. This time from A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away. Here's a taster:

SSCs. Death was to good for them.
Seriously.
These fuckers deserved to live forever. The sleepwalking surburban slave classes in their Wimpey mock-Tudor penal colonies. A jail that needed no walls because the inmates had ben brainwashed into believing they wanted to be there. Incarceration by aspiration, all the time mindlessly propogating and self-replicating, passing on their submissive DNA to the nest generation of of glazed-eyed prisoners.
And every day they'd get up and pray that emancipation never came: 'Dear Lord, protect us from uniqueness. Grant unto us eternal conformity, and deliver us from distinction. Amen.'
There was one up his arse right then, flashing the headlights on his MX3, the bloke's eyes windeing and nostrils flairing in time with the admonitory illuminations. An absolute fanny. Risking his life in an attemt to overtake before the crawler lane ends, so he'll be one car - one car - up the queue when he reaches the traffic lights. And what did that tell you about the life he was risking?
Exactly.
Surburban Sad Cunts. This was the real reason for road rage. It wasn't a symptom of growing traffic cingestion (though it shared the single car-usage factor), it was that this was the closest they got to defiance, the last ghostly remnant of the will to assert some identity.

...

We would never car-pool. The SSC would rather sit in tailbacks every day, waiting for that brief moment when he can put the foot down and pretend he's going somewhere important, womehwere he wants to go, and fast. That power surge borrowed from the engine, the feel of the steering wheel in his hands, and Bryan Adams on the stereo. In that moment, he's cool as fuck: he's a secret agent, a maverick detective, an assassin, a terrorist. As opposed to an insurance adjuster.
What never occured to him was that, if they existed, the secret agent, the maverick detective, the assassin and the terrorist would actually be driving some nondescript SurburbanSadCuntmobile, because they needed to blend in. Sure, they maybe frove something flashier on their days off, but you could bet it wasn't a fucking Mazda. And you could bet they weren't fantasising about being a family-man wage-serf while they burned rubber.
The SSC's fantasies are uniform and predictable because he has no imagination. He needs advertising to do his imagining for him. That's why, bereft of independent opinion or any informed sense of judgement, he thinks Denise Richards is sexy, that Sony make good hi-fi equipment and that drinking Becks makes him cooler than the bloke next to him with a pint of heavy. That;s why he thinks he looks like a different guy driving the family six-seater than at the controls of his overpriced (and paradoxically worth every penny) ego-chariot. He thinks assassins and terrorists tool around in sports cars, and if you asked him what kind of motor Death would drive, (after you told him a hearse was too literal) he'd probably describe the vehicle of his ultimate fantasies, styled, of course, in black. A lamborghini Countach or Ferrari Testarossa, or maybe some minor variation of the Batmobile; a sleek, powerful, dark and incomparably macho machine.
And he'd be wrong. Miles out.
Death would drive an Espace.
He'd drive an SSC family slave-wagon just to underline that the life He was taking away wasn't worth living anyway; with plenty of seats in the back for the next generation when their turn came.

...

A grim smile crept across his face as he recognised the song currently playing, the new chart-topping single by EGF. It was the standard homogenous Euro-dance number, another near-identical slice off this endless turb that was being shat out of the Low Countries via the Mediteranean teen-copulation colonies.
EGF. It stood for Eindhoven Groove Factory. Seriously. There had been a time, not so long ago, when if you had any ambitions for a career in the music biz, being from continental Europe was something you had to keep quiet, unless you were Einsturzende Neubaten and quite clearly too mental to care. It was commerical and credibility suicide. You just couldn't be from Europe and expect to sell records in the UK or US, the two biggest music markets.
The Scandinavians were inexplicably tolerated, benefitting perhaps from a cultural exemption that owed little to geography and a lot to a natural preponderance of strapping blondes. From Abba to The Cardigans, via Roxette and Ace of Bass, it had never hurt the album sales to have a frontwoman who was blonde with legs up to her head. At least you had to give the Scans some credit for having sussed that this was the only recipe viable for export.

...

The latest (culminatory, as far as he was concerned) infestation was EGF, and their inexplicably ubiquitous (it's really big in the clubs!) 'song', Ibiza Devil Groove.
There was never much to differentiate the work of any particular bunch of these mindless fuckers from that of their peers, but EGF has nonetheless managed the unlikely feat of truly distinguishing themselves in his eyes and ears. They had done this through their choice of which obligatory past standard to sample from (in lieu of spending two minutes coming up with a hook, or even a lyric). Not for them an old Andy Summers riff or Topper Headon beat; Eindhoven's finest had built the summer's biggest smash around the chorus of Cliff Richard's Devil Woman.
Rock and fucking Roll.

There's another really good bit a couple of paragraphs down, but my fingers are getting tired and I wouldn't want to spoil it for you all when you go out and buy it.

**Drum** · 6th July 2007, 23:06

"We were somewhere near Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . .' And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals!?' "

**ManDownUnder** · 7th July 2007, 20:56

Right ya bastards.... here's a goodun for ya!

Google or no... NAME THIS BOOK!

Bling for the first correct answer

"Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagtination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanatacism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change"

GO ON I CHALLENGE YA!

**Skyryder** · 7th July 2007, 21:17

Originally Posted by ManDownUnder

Right ya bastards.... here's a goodun for ya!

Google or no... NAME THIS BOOK!

Bling for the first correct answer

"Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagtination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanatacism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change"

GO ON I CHALLENGE YA!

De Sade, M.

**janno** · 7th July 2007, 22:32

Originally Posted by Drum

"We were somewhere near Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . .' And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals!?' "

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?