Killer Beginnings: Five Crime Novels with Dazzling Opening Scenes

When I started planning my latest novel, I had nothing but a character and a situation: What if a girl of eleven climbed out her bedroom window one night and, feeling adventurous, went wandering in the woods near her house—only to find the body of a young woman lying in the grass beneath an oak tree? And what if the killer was lingering nearby, what if he saw the girl there and crept up behind her?

I knew what he would say to her. It seemed obvious: Don’t turn around.

And I knew she wouldn’t turn around, and he would let her live. Eventually I gave the girl a name, Kate Summerlin, and she grew up to be a true crime writer. And the killer, known as Merkury, would go on to claim other victims, but he would never forget about Kate. She would hear from him now and then. He would send her texts from throwaway cellphones.

Sooner or later he would take another victim in her hometown. And she would go back. She wouldn’t be able to stay away. And they would meet again. Obviously.

I’m always amazed at how a book can grow and evolve from a simple idea. That first idea I had—the girl climbing out her bedroom window—became the opening scene of my new novel, Don’t Turn Around. So it seems appropriate to share some examples of excellent beginnings from writers I admire: five books with opening scenes that impressed and inspired me.

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

This thriller from 2007 opens with Portland detective Archie Sheridan visiting psychiatrist Gretchen Lowell to consult her about a serial killer he’s spent the last ten years searching for—and realizing that she is the killer, and that she’s drugged him and he is entirely in her power. From the start, Cain establishes a surreal intimacy between killer and victim: “It’s time to go, darling,” Gretchen whispers to Archie as she spirits him away to a secluded place where she will hold him captive and torment him for days on end before abruptly releasing him. The story picks up two years later with Gretchen in prison and Archie leading the hunt for a new serial killer, but he’s still haunted by what happened to him and finds himself drawn back to her again and again.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

Beat the Reaper begins with Peter Brown, a first-year medical resident, getting mugged on his way to the hospital where he works. In the space of a few paragraphs, Bazell establishes his protagonist as smart, witty, and tough—the kind of guy who can describe to you, anatomically, exactly what’s happening as he breaks his would-be mugger’s arm, and throw in a few wisecracks while he does it. In short, Peter is not your typical doctor. Over the course of the novel, we learn why in a series of flashbacks that detail his criminal past. And when his past inevitably catches up with him, he’ll need to fight to protect the new life he’s made for himself.

Marked Man by William Lashner

This is one of an outstanding series of novels by Lashner set in Philadelphia featuring a criminal defense lawyer named Victor Karl. In this one, Victor wakes up after a night of drinking with a woman’s name tattooed on his chest and no idea how it got there. The name is Chantal Adair, and Victor sets out to discover who she is and how he’s connected to her. At the same time, he’s working on a separate problem, trying to help an elderly woman find her art-thief son and resolve his legal problems so he can visit her before she dies. Lashner deftly weaves these two plots together, pitting Victor against a rogues’ gallery of eccentric characters who’ll stop at nothing to prevent him from finding the answers he’s looking for.

The Other People by C. J. Tudor

C.J. Tudor’s third novel, a psychological thriller with supernatural elements, begins with a traffic jam on the M1 outside London: Gabe Forman, heading home from work, catches a glimpse of a frightened child’s face through the rear windshield of the car in front of him and is convinced that it’s his five-year-old daughter, Izzy. Just then, traffic starts to move again and he tries to follow the car, but it slips away from him. When he phones home in a panic, his call is answered not by his wife but by the police. Flash forward three years and Gabe is a shell of his former self. Everyone believes that his wife and daughter are dead, murdered by an intruder, but Gabe is sure that Izzy is alive, and he searches for her endlessly. Intercut with his story are chapters that follow a mysterious woman named Fran, who’s on the run with a young girl named Alice who suffers from fits of narcolepsy during which she sees strange visions. And looming over everything is a group of anonymous strangers who communicate with one another online: the ‘Other People’ of the novel’s title. They are people who have suffered losses of their own, and if you ask them to help you find justice, they’ll do it—but only for a price.

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs

The slow-burn opening of Ghostman focuses on a pair of thieves waiting to carry out an early morning robbery of an armored car outside an Atlantic City casino. The heist is meant to go off without a hitch, but it explodes into violence that leaves one of the thieves dead and the other on the run with the stolen cash. Enter Jack, the ghostman of the title, a fixer hired by Marcus Hayes, the crime boss who planned the robbery. Jack’s assignment is to recover the money, and to do it he’ll need to evade the FBI and the minions of a rival mobster. What’s worse, Jack has already failed Marcus once, on a botched bank robbery years before. This is his chance to make things right, and if he doesn’t, he won’t live to get another.

About Don’t Turn Around by Harry Dolan:

When Kate Summerlin was eleven years old, she climbed out her bedroom window on a spring night, looking for a taste of freedom in the small college town where she was living with her parents. But what she found as she wandered in the woods near her house was something else: the body of a beautiful young woman, the first of Merkury’s victims. And before she could come to grips with what she was seeing, she heard a voice behind her—the killer’s voice—saying: “Don’t turn around.”

Now, at the age of twenty-nine, Kate is a successful true crime writer, but she has never told anyone the truth about what happened on that long-ago night. When Merkury claims yet another victim—a college student named Bryan Cayhill—Kate finds herself drawn back to the town where everything started. She sets out to make sense of this latest crime, but the deeper she gets into the story, the more she comes to realize that it’s far from over. Her search for the truth about Merkury is leading her down into a dark labyrinth, and if she hopes to escape, she’ll have to meet him once again—this time face to face.