A brief intermission
This round has no unifying factor other than groovy first lines.
To start with, we have a mystery: Martha Grimes' The Blue Last, a story about ghosts, dead and living. And lapsed earls undercover as gardeners.
Mickey Haggerty, a DCI with the City police, has asked for Richard Jury's help. Two skeletons have been unearthed during the excavation of London's last bomb site, where once stood a pub called the Blue Last. The grandchild of brewery magnate Oliver Tynedale supposedly survived that December 1940 bombing...but did she? Then the son of the onetime owner of the Blue Last is found shot to death--the book he was writing about London during the German blitzkrieg...gone. A stolen life, a stolen book? Or is any of this what it seems? With Melrose Plant sent undercover, Jury calls into question identity, memory, and provenance in a case that resurrects his own hauntingly sad past.
An excerpt from about a third in:
"It's a puzzle, young Ben, it surely is." He was quiet for a few moments. "I wonder...now, I had experience as an MP with a young soldier who was, uh, messing around with the captain's wife. I finally twigged it, but what he done, see, was parade a good-looking German tart--ahem, I mean a woman--around just to put us off the scent. With a girl that looked like her, why bother with the wife? What I'm sayin' is, could the business with young Gemma be a distraction?"
Benny frowned. "Distraction? But from what?"
The Sergeant shrugged, wetting cigarette paper with the tip of his tongue. "How about that murder?"
"Yes, but...trying to kill Gem, all that happened before the murder."
"Still..."
They were silent for a few moments as the Sergeant smoked his cigarette. Benny looked through the dark out over the river to the lights on the far side. "Still, I wish that detective'd come back."
The Sergeant pinched the end of his cigarette before lighting it. "You can bank on that, young Ben. The Bill always comes back."
******
So, what's the first line of this relatively recent (2001) murder mystery?
Poll The Blue Last
Deadline for first lines is Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 12 noon GMT.
To start with, we have a mystery: Martha Grimes' The Blue Last, a story about ghosts, dead and living. And lapsed earls undercover as gardeners.
Mickey Haggerty, a DCI with the City police, has asked for Richard Jury's help. Two skeletons have been unearthed during the excavation of London's last bomb site, where once stood a pub called the Blue Last. The grandchild of brewery magnate Oliver Tynedale supposedly survived that December 1940 bombing...but did she? Then the son of the onetime owner of the Blue Last is found shot to death--the book he was writing about London during the German blitzkrieg...gone. A stolen life, a stolen book? Or is any of this what it seems? With Melrose Plant sent undercover, Jury calls into question identity, memory, and provenance in a case that resurrects his own hauntingly sad past.
An excerpt from about a third in:
"It's a puzzle, young Ben, it surely is." He was quiet for a few moments. "I wonder...now, I had experience as an MP with a young soldier who was, uh, messing around with the captain's wife. I finally twigged it, but what he done, see, was parade a good-looking German tart--ahem, I mean a woman--around just to put us off the scent. With a girl that looked like her, why bother with the wife? What I'm sayin' is, could the business with young Gemma be a distraction?"
Benny frowned. "Distraction? But from what?"
The Sergeant shrugged, wetting cigarette paper with the tip of his tongue. "How about that murder?"
"Yes, but...trying to kill Gem, all that happened before the murder."
"Still..."
They were silent for a few moments as the Sergeant smoked his cigarette. Benny looked through the dark out over the river to the lights on the far side. "Still, I wish that detective'd come back."
The Sergeant pinched the end of his cigarette before lighting it. "You can bank on that, young Ben. The Bill always comes back."
******
So, what's the first line of this relatively recent (2001) murder mystery?
Poll The Blue Last
Deadline for first lines is Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 12 noon GMT.