First words.

OK, I have a weakness for a good fictional crime story. I’ve read a lot of the Rebus series from Ian Rankin. PD James is one of my favourite reads and I’m at a loss to why I haven’t bought the second book in the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson after enjoying ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo” so much.

Anyway a friend lent me a couple of books, one a crime fiction by Michael Connelly. I’ve seen the name around and I couldn’t remember if I had read any of his books before, but the blurb on the back sounded interesting so I didn’t hesitate about borrowing it.

I finished the last book I was reading last night and decided I was in the mood for a crime story so I picked this one up, feeling happy that I had nothing better to do than read a book.

First sentence; “Death is my beat”.

Er… what?

I was stunned by the cliché. Still I continued on to the second sentence.

“I make my living from it.” I’m already thinking thoughts along the lines of ‘true, true, you’ve already killed a story.’

Third line; “I forge my professional reputation on it.”

I can’t help myself, I have to scan the rest of the page to see if there is any hint that this is a satire on the genre, or if the opening lines are really the work of a soon to be murder victim that happens to be a hack author.

Nope, this seems that I’m meant to be taking this seriously. Quietly, I put the book down.

A little quick googling and I’ve found that the authour has published  around 20 books in this genre since 1992. Mostly just one a year, but sometimes 2. I think this shows…

I do think this is the most judgemental I have ever been. I’ve had books before that for a variety of reasons I haven’t finished. But I’ve always read at least a couple of chapters.

3 sentences is a record. Hopefully, it will be a long standing one…