If the mission of a first line was to establish a sense of foreboding and intrigue then I'd have to say that Tom Clancy achieved that mission with his first line way back in 1986.
They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia.
The passage only continue to up the tension as it continues.
They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. They were Muslims, though one could scarcely have known it from their speech, which was Russian, though inflected with the singsong Azerbaijani accent that wrongly struck the senior members of the engineering staff as entertaining. The three of them had just completed a complex task in the truck and train yards, the opening of hundreds of loading valves. Ibrahim Tolkaze was their leader, though he was not in front. Rasul was in front, the massive former sergeant in the MVD who had already killed six men this cold night— three with a pistol hidden under his coat and three with his hands alone. No one had heard them. An oil refinery is a noisy place. The bodies were left in shadows, and the three men entered Tolkaze’s car for the next part of their task.
Clancy, Tom - Red Storm Rising
Pretty good stuff if you ask me. I've been looking forward to reading this for some time. Now, after trying a couple of first time novelist's fare (a mixed bag) I would have to say it's nice to come back to some familiar territory.
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