First Chapter ~ First Paragraph (November 3)

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

My opening this week comes from The Silent Dead by Claire McGowan, the third in the Paula McGuire series which started with The Lost.

Blurb

Victim: Male. Mid-thirties. 5’7″.
Cause of death: Hanging. Initial impression – murder.
ID: Mickey Doyle. Suspected terrorist and member of the Mayday Five.
The officers at the crime scene know exactly who the victim is.
Doyle was one of five suspected bombers who caused the deaths of sixteen people.
The remaining four are also missing and when a second body is found, decapitated, it’s clear they are being killed by the same methods their victims suffered.
Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire is assigned the case but she is up against the clock – both personally and professionally.
With moral boundaries blurred between victim and perpetrator, will be Paula be able to find those responsible? After all, even killers deserve justice, don’t they? NetGalley

~ ~ ~

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro

Prologue

I am dead.
I don’t mind. I want to be dead. Nothing could be worse than staying alive, not like this. But all the same I’m running away. I can feel the blood between my toes, my feet slipping on the roots and branches. They’ve taken my clothes from me. You’re dead, they say. No one will miss you. You’re evil. The world is better off without you.

Chapter One

Ballyterrin, Northern Ireland, April 2011

‘We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.’
Paula’s lilies were wilting already. She shifted on her swollen feet. The bulk of her belly meant the only way she could comfortably stand was with one hip jutted out, leaning on it and she didn’t think such an insolent pose would cut it before the alter. She’d already seen the priest’s eye travelling over her stomach and then pointedly not looking at it Catholics – they were good at pretending things that did exist didn’t. And vice versa.

Please note that these excerpts are taken from a proof copy

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