First Chapter ~ First Paragraph (May 2)

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.

This week my opener is from The Cleaner by Elisabeth Herrmann which was published on 24 March 2017.

Blurb

Pools of blood, scenes of carnage, signs of agonising death – who deals with the aftermath of violence once the bodies have been taken away?

Judith Kepler has seen it all. She is a crime scene specialist. She turns crime scenes back into habitable spaces. She is a cleaner.

It is at the home of a woman who has been brutally murdered that she is suddenly confronted with her own past. The murder victim knew Judith’s secret: as a child Judith was sent to an orphanage under mysterious circumstances – parentage unknown. And the East German secret police were always there, in the background. . . .

When Judith begins to ask questions, she becomes the target of some powerful enemies.

And nothing will ever be the same again. Amazon

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First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro

Yuri Gagarin Children’s Home
Sassnitz Rügen Island, East Germany, 1985

Martha Jonas stood in front of her open wardrobe and pressed the Bakerlite headphones even more firmly to her ears. The hissing intensified. The station disappeared beneath the other electromagnetic waves. Pulsating voices and fragments of music from neighbouring stations overlaid the frequency. She held her breath and turned the dial a fraction to the right, then to the left. In vain. She had lost it.
The portable radio was hidden behind a stack of neatly ironed folded and numbered bedding. She frantically reached for the antenna cable. Time was running out.

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I’m curious to know what Martha Jonas was hoping to hear. What about you?

What do you think? Would you keep reading?