Friday, May 25, 2012

Book Beginnings: A Fall from Grace


Book Beginnings on Fridays is a meme with this theme: Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Visit the post at Rose City Reader and view the other links and get a glimpse of books you may not be familiar with.


The first paragraph of my latest read is:
Charlie Peace came out of the door of Blackett and Podmore, the estate agents, holding a sheaf of property descriptions. He slipped into his car, parked on the edge of the little square in the center of the village, and began to riffle through them.
The book is A Fall from Grace by Robert Barnard. It is the eighth book in a series about Yorkshire constable Charlie Peace.

Robert Barnard is in my pantheon of favorite authors. Of his forty (or so) mystery novels, I have read at least half of them and have another ten in my TBR piles. I have read all of the previous novels in the Charlie Peace series. This opening did not pull me in. It does set the atmosphere in a way: an ordinary man doing ordinary things. But in Robert Barnard's mysteries, nothing is ordinary.

I love this cover. I collect book covers featuring skulls and skeletons and a lot of Barnard's recent books have a skeleton on the cover. A bonus for me.



4 comments:

JC Jones said...

First time I have seen this series. I love mysteries and this sounds like fun. Here is my post: Book Beginnings

Gilion at Rose City Reader said...

I love mysteries set in English villages! Thanks for the introduction.

And thanks for including it on Book Beginnings!

Chris Thompson said...

This book has an awesome front cover. The yellow scarf is a great touch.

wcs53 said...

I haven't heard of this series. Looks quite interesting - love the cover! My post:
http://wcs53.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/book-beginnings-and-friday-56-silver-may-25/