You've Got Five Pages, The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz, To Tell Me You're Good.

CORRECTION: Over the course of the podcast I say The Twist of a Knife is the third book of Horowitz's series, but it is actually the fourth. My apologies! The first chapter can make or break a reader's engagement with a story. We as writers must craft brilliant opening pages in order to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it! One of my favorite styles of writing is writing with personality. Horowitz's The Twist of a Knife has plenty of personality in the prose because the narrator, Horowitz himself, IS a character in the series. It's a delightful homage to the Watson-style storytelling approach Doyle took for chronicling the adventures of Sherlock Holmes--except in Horowitz's case, the story begins with him and his Detective Hawthorn parting ways.  NOOOOOooooooo..... Of course they can't stay parted. There is a whole book here, after all. But such a beginning does help establish some immediate conflict between protagonists that is bound to help make future points of plot--such as the murder of Horowitz's critics--more challenging to overcome. The pair's banter and chemistry were a joy to read, rather like the Thursday Murder Club in Richard Osman's series. My one niggle here is that Horowitz opens his story with an exposition dump. While I appreciate we are getting exposition from the character in character voice that establishes the story-world, it's still a bit of a slog, especially when compared to the quick, delightful dialogue that follows it. What will you make of these first five pages? Let's find out!