that rings a bell, yeah. Boomer or swimpy maybe...? Or kicky...?
I'll look.
Is just, I have a contender ...
I started this book today that I've had for ages, dont even remember where I got it from anymore, but never got round to reading -- brace yourself -- one Paul Nazaroff's
Hunted through Central Asia - On the Run from Lenin's Secret Police.
Yeah, really. It's autobiographical and everything. Cover looks like a Western movie poster, but - Oxford University Press. Hey.
It's sure got a classy first sentence - and one that must be as succesful in introducing the main character and type of story as any genre classic:
Quote:
One evening in Tashkend, about the end of August 1918, as I was sitting in my study quietly filling cartridges for an anticipated day's snipe-shooting, there pulled up at the steps of the house a smart carriage drawn by a splendid pair of bays.
That IS a fabulous first sentence!
Snort! I like it too....
Reminds me a little of a book I am reading, one of those books put out before publishing...
it's by a fellow whose first language is not english, but who has gotten Edgar nomination (not our Edgar) re mystery...
The 'Advance Reading Copy' was for "Havana World Series" by Jose' Latour, a Cuban-born writer now living in Spain.
...my point being that the copy I am reading surely needs a final editing, but I like it that way, and his writing is, at least in the pages I've read, idiosyncratically formal in fifties american english, sort of (though that is perhaps the first character-narrator's tone.)
why do I mention this, the beginning of it, all I've read, is, in its way, quite like the smart carriage drawn by the splendid pair of bays.....
