Tired of Waiting? Something to Pass the Time

Today I’m waiting. Waiting to hear of the reaction to my latest manuscript. Especially waiting for the election returns tomorrow night.

I figure some of you are waiting rather than working as well. So, I’ve come up with something to help you pass the time.

Here’s a list of first sentences from some favorite works of crime fiction. Put the title and author in a comment below. (Spelling counts!) The first commenter to get them all right wins! If no one gets them all, the person with the most correct answers by Friday at noon Pacific Time wins. What does the winner get beyond prestige and adulation? Well, the best I can think of right now is a personally inscribed copy of Dot Dead, but maybe I’ll come up with something better.

Good luck. Voilà.

1. After creating the heavens and the earth, God produced, in his own image, the first man, and named him Adam.

2. In the shadows of the John F. Kennedy Expressway, surrounded by warehouses, factories, and auto-body shops stands Villa d’Este, a family-run restaurant, that serves generous portions of decidedly untrendy Italian-American food at reasonable prices.

3. The warm glow from the cabin’s window told a lie.

4. The smile was famous.

5. Have you seen us?

6. Halfway to Christmas, Forchetti stated the obvious: “You can’t teach for shit.”

7. Cougar flipped through the trail log.

8. My weekend was D.O.A....dead on arrival.

9. In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army.

10. Mas Arai didn’t believe in Jesus or Buddha, but thought there might be something in bachi.

11. Cape Weathers just wanted to know what time it was before he died.

12. It took just minutes for Dr. Emil Varga to reach the old man’s room.

13. I’d seen him angry plenty of times.

14. “Is this payback?” I said as I jogged along a powder blue hearse, wearing a zippered black jumpsuit and Reeboks and panting in the eighty degree heat.

15. I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.

16. It happened every year, was almost a ritual.

17. The headline made me sit down when I read it, that and the picture next to it, and the article that spilled out over to columns underneath.

18. Josh Ryder looked through the camera’s viewfinder, focusing on the security guard arguing with a young mother whose hair was dyed so red it looked like she was on fire.

19. Swirling snow bit his cheeks, snapped at his blinking eyes.

20. Marilyn Crier peered in the window, and I knew the past was about to kick me in the ass.