Rec. #583: Revisiting First Sign of Murder #6: First Hit of the Season

[Originally posted October 9, 2012.]

"Like most of Jocelyn's domestic resolutions, this one was doomed to come to naught, but this time for the worst of reasons. Just as they were about to go for their coats, the door of the study burst open and Jason Saylin came staggering into the room, looking like a puppet who'd just been electrocuted."

--- First Hit of the Season, Jane Dentinger, 1984

Rec. #479: Revisiting First Sign of Murder #1

"She lit her cigarette and leant over the window sill. She became aware of a new sound. It came up through her conscious thoughts, gaining definition and edge. It was a thin blade of sound, sharp and insistent. It grew louder. It was inside the building, an intermittent, horridly shrill noise that came closer. A hand closed round Roberta's heart. Someone was screaming."

--- Death of a Peer, Ngaio Marsh, 1940
(Rec. #381)

Connections to previous Wreckage: For other Marsh novels, see List #27, in which I wish Ngaio Marsh a happy birthday.

List #56: An Alphabet for December -- R

[An incomplete guide to some of the things I wrecked this year.]

"R" Is for ... The Reaper

(First Sign of Murder #18)

"The pen was not required. Unseen by the bishop, Otis Joy had snatched up St. Paul's Cathedral. He swung it with tremendous force at the back of the big, bald head.

"The impact of solid glass against bone was irresistible. Marcus Glastonbury was killed by the first blow. He got two more to be certain."

--- The Reaper, Peter Lovesey, 2000

(Rec. #21)

[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L] [M] [N] [O] [P] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W]

First Sign of Murder #19: The Cater Street Hangman

"Edward, you must destroy the newspapers," Caroline was saying. "Say that you lost them."

--- The Cater Street Hangman, Anne Perry, 1979

First Sign of Murder #18: The Reaper

"The pen was not required. Unseen by the bishop, Otis Joy had snatched up St. Paul's Cathedral. He swung it with tremendous force at the back of the big, bald head.

"The impact of solid glass against bone was irresistible. Marcus Glastonbury was killed by the first blow. He got two more to be certain."

--- The Reaper, Peter Lovesey, 2000

(Rec. #21)

First Sign of Murder #17: Tied Up in Tinsel

"How far these impressions were to be attributed to hindsight and how far to immediate observation, Troy was unable to determine, but she reflected that after all it was a tricky business adapting oneself to a domestic staff entirely composed of murderers."

---Tied Up in Tinsel, Ngaio Marsh, 1972

Also: Death and the Dancing Footman (Rec. #37), Night at the Vulcan (Rec. #102), List #5, Colour Scheme (Rec. #190), Death of a Peer (First Sign of Murder #1)

First Sign of Murder #16: A Study in Scarlet

"My dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes:

There has been a bad business during the night at 3, Lauriston Gardens, off the Brixton Road. Our man on the beat saw a light there about two in the morning, and as the house was an empty one, suspected something was amiss."

--- A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887

First Sign of Murder #15: Death in Autumn

"Even so, if the body had gone over the weir there would be nothing for it but to wait three days until it came up and was spotted by some passer-by in one of the small towns through which the Arno wound its way towards Pisa.

Unless, of course, the whole thing was a sick joke. It happened now and then."

--- Death in Autumn, Magdalen Nabb, 1984

See also: List #6 (A Few Seasonally Inappropriate Options for the Northern Hemisphere) and Rec. #144 (Death of an Englishman).

First Sign of Murder #14: Case Histories

"Police helicopters flew low over outlying villages and countryside as far as the county borders, truck drivers were alerted to keep an eye out on the motorway, and the army was brought in to search the fens, but none of them --- from Amelia screaming herself sick in the back garden to the Territorial Army recruits on their hands and knees in the rain on Midsummer Common --- could find a single trace of Olivia, not a hair or a flake of skin, not a pink rabbit slipper nor a blue mouse."

--- Case Histories, Kate Atkinson, 2004

See more: Case Histories was Rec. #3.

See also:

One Good Turn (Rec. #69)

Human Croquet (Rec. #137)

When Will There Be Goods News? (Rec. #192)

7 Mysteries from Authors Who Are Still Alive (List #4)

First Sign of Murder #13: Octagon House

"The continued headlines, of course, were not due to the post office, or even the mural. But like the Octagon House and the Pickle Lime Lady, they continued to provide an important and bizarre background. They were what the press meant when it referred to the Incredible Background of These Startling Incidents."

--- Octagon House, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, 1937

First Sign of Murder #12: Smilla's Sense of Snow

" . . . it's the sort of silence that is waiting for something to burst. From where I'm standing, two things happen.

First, Julianne falls to her knees and puts her face to the ground, and the other women leave her alone.

The second event is internal, inside of me, and what bursts through is an insight.

All along I must have had a comprehensive pact with Isaiah not to leave him in the lurch, never, not even now."

--- Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Høeg, 1992

See also: List #4: 7 Mysteries from Authors Who Are Still Alive, List #6: A Few Seasonally Inappropriate Options for the Northern Hemisphere, and Rec. #150.

First Sign of Murder #11: Love Lies Bleeding

"'Very well,' he said, and stumbled over the words. 'This--this is a most tragic business, Mrs. Love. I don't know what to say . . . my utmost sympathy . . . I'll get in touch with a doctor and with the police . . . Yes. . . Yes, of course . . . Good-bye.'

He rang off, controlling himself with difficulty, and turned to Galbraith.

'It's Love,' he said. 'Shot.'

Galbraith looked bewildered; his professional competence seemed incapable of coping with anything like this. 'Shot?' he echoed foolishly. 'You don't mean killed?'

'Yes. Killed.'

'Suicide?'

'I don't know. His wife was too upset to say very much. But in any case ---'

The telephone rang again. The headmaster took it up; listened, incredulous and appalled.

'All right,' he said at last. 'Stay there and don't touch anything. I'll make the necessary arrangements.' He replaced the receiver. 'That was Wells, speaking from Hubbard's Building. He's just found Somers in the common room . . .'

He put out one hand to brace himself against the back of a chair. His face for a moment was livid.

'Somers is dead, too,' he said. 'Shot through the eye.'"

---Love Lies Bleeding, Edmund Crispin, 1948

First Sign of Murder #10: The Falcon at the Portal

"Reason told me he would not crash to the bottom, since the length of the rope had been carefully measured. Reason did not prevent me from letting out an involuntary cry. Emerson let out a flood of bad language and jumped for the spinning handle of the windlass. By sheer brute strength he managed to stop the rope unwinding; but by that time most of it was already in the shaft, and Ramses was at the bottom.

A light appeared below. It was the beam of the candle Ramses carried in his pocket, and it illumined the chair frame and a huddled, featureless shape beside it.

There could be no doubt that the shape was that of a human body, or the remains of one."

---The Falcon at the Portal, Elizabeth Peters, 1999

First Sign of Murder #9: In a Dark House

"Hemmed in on one side by a sofa, on the other by what seemed to be stacks of lumber, Rose tried to turn back the other way. As she maneuvered her body round, her gloved hand came down on something that yielded beneath her fingers. It felt malleable, like flesh, with the brittleness of bone beneath.

Rose looked down, blinking eyes burning and swollen from the heat, and felt the bile rise in her throat. 'Jesus Christ,' she said. 'We've got a body.'"

--- In a Dark House, Deborah Crombie, 2004

See also: Dreaming of the Bones (Rec. #55) and List #4: 7 Mysteries from Authors Who Are Still Alive.

First Sign of Murder #8: The Club Dumas

"The flash projected the outline of the hanged man onto the wall. He hung motionless from a light fixture in the center of the room, and as the photographer moved around him, taking pictures, the flashes threw the silhouette onto a succession of paintings, glass cabinets full of porcelain, shelves of books, open curtains framing great windows beyond which the rain was falling.

The examining magistrate was a young man. His thinning hair was untidy and still damp, as was the raincoat he wore while he dictated to a clerk who sat on a sofa as he typed, his typewriter on a chair. The tapping punctuated the monotonous voice of the magistrate and the whispered comments of the policemen who were moving about the room."

--- opening lines, The Club Dumas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, 1993

First Sign of Murder #7: At Bertram's Hotel

"It was a fine night and he walked home to Bertram's Hotel after first getting into a bus which took him in the opposite direction. It was midnight when he got in and Bertram's Hotel at midnight usually preserved a decorous appearance of everyone having gone to bed. The lift was on a higher floor so the Canon walked up the stairs. He came to his room, inserted the key in the lock, threw the door open and entered!

Good gracious, was he seeing things? But who -- how -- he saw the upraised arm too late. . .

Stars exploded in a kind of Guy Fawkes' display within his head. . ."

--- At Bertram's Hotel, Agatha Christie, 1965

First Sign of Murder #6: First Hit of the Season

"Like most of Jocelyn's domestic resolutions, this one was doomed to come to naught, but this time for the worst of reasons. Just as they were about to go for their coats, the door of the study burst open and Jason Saylin came staggering into the room, looking like a puppet who'd just been electrocuted."

--- First Hit of the Season, Jane Dentinger, 1984

First Sign of Murder #5: The Thin Man

"She gave me a newspaper and a cup of coffee and said: 'Read that.'

I patiently read a paragraph or two, then put the paper down and took a sip of coffee. 'Fun's fun,' I said, 'but right now I'd swap you all the interviews with Mayor-elect O'Brien ever printed --- and throw in the Indian picture --- for a slug of whis--'

'Not that, stupid.' She put a finger on the paper. 'That.'"

---The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett, 1933

For more, see also: Rec. #234

First Sign of Murder #4: Death in Kenya

"She dropped the roses, and with a choking sob of relief began to run, tripping and stumbling over the rough grass in the uncertain light. She was within a yard of that dimly seen figure when something checked her. A sound . . .

There was something wrong. Something crazily and impossibly wrong. She stopped suddenly, staring. Her eyes widened in her white face and her mouth opened in a soundless scream. For it was someone else. Someone suddenly and horribly familiar."

--- Death in Kenya (aka Later Than You Think), M.M. Kaye, 1958

Connections to previous Wreckage: Death in Zanzibar (Rec. #183), Death in Berlin (Rec. #244)

First Sign of Murder #3: The Estate of the Beckoning Lady

I think quotes from a book's key moments often give you a better idea about whether you'll like the book than any summary could. For First Sign of Murder (title subject to change), I'll be sharing --- you guessed it --- the lines from mystery novels that first alert readers to the fact that a murder has occurred.

"Presently he said: 'There's a man asleep down there.' Watching her slyly out of the corner of his eye, he saw that she was suitably startled.

'Really?' she said at last. 'How do you know?'

'Because I saw him when I looked under the bridge. I couldn't get near because Choc kept pushing me out. He is an enormous dog; soft, but enormous.'

'Yes,' she agreed absently. Her light-brown eyes were worried, and she stared down at the two men who were now both in the ditch by the bridge, peering at something.

Rupert continued to contemplate the infinity of the sky. The blue had turned into a million colors, he noticed, like hundreds and thousands." 

--- The Estate of the Beckoning Lady, Margery Allingham, 1955

Connections to previous Wreckage: Sweet Danger (Rec. #133), Black Plumes (Rec. #156)