From Still Life, the first of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries:

“Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday. It was pretty much a surprise all around.”

For the record, Penny has a pretty great final paragraph in her Acknowledgements section as well:

“I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang, when I thought I would die from loneliness. I know that the real blessing here isn’t that I have a book published, but that I have so many people to thank.”

If this keeps up I may just have found my latest candidate for my next Pick-An-Author-and-Read-All-Their-Books-In-Order project.

Related Links: 

• Unforgettable First Lines — The Deanna Raybourn edition (BostonWriters)