First Chapter ~ First Paragraph (February 21)

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 paragraph this week comes from an author whose books really do have their finger on the pulse of modern life while not forgetting that the reader needs to have more than an issue to hang their hat on – Quieter Than Killing by Sarah Hilary.

Blurb

Sometimes staying silent is the only way to survive.

You only ever ask that. Why did I do it? You never ask what they did.’
The winter cold is biting, and a series of assaults is pulling DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake out into the frosty, mean streets of London far more than they’d like. The attacks seem random, but when Marnie’s family home is ransacked, there are signs that the burglary can have only been committed by a child – and someone who knows all about her. It will take a prison visit to her foster brother, Stephen, to help Marnie see the connections – and to force both her and Noah to face the truth about the creeping, chilling reaches of a troubled upbringing. For how can a damaged child really leave their past behind them? NetGalley

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First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro

Six years ago

He’s washing the car – slapping water, sloppy. She’s in the kitchen, cutting. Not meat and not bread, something that chunks under the knife. Carrots, or onions. The sounds soak up through the house to where Stephen is sitting in the room with the red wall.

Her room. The shelf over the bed is full of her things. Books and pictures, and the dark blue box with its snarl of bracelets. His favourite is the horseshoe charm, silver, curved like a half-finished heart. He wears it under the sleeve of his pyjamas, in bed. They said they’d put her things away into the attic if he wanted but he said no, he didn’t mind. He likes looking at her things, it makes him feel safe. He sleeps with her books weighted around him like stones.

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Well I’m keen to know more – are you?