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If that sounds like a spoof, you surely know who I’m caricaturing. We decided last week that you couldn’t do much better than the opening paragraph of Hammett’s “Red Harvest” for an introduction to the narrative voice, narrator, place and tone of the entire novel. But if anyone could beat it, we’d have to look at Raymond Chandler.

The grumpy god of the gumshoe genre claimed not to have much time for the
idea of a classic in crime writing. In one of his essays, he wrote that contemporary writers who aimed for historical fiction, social vignette, or broad canvas would never surpass “Henry Esmond”, “Madame Bovary”, or “War and Peace”. Crime writers, on the other hand, would easily be able to
devise a better mystery than the ones detailed in “The Hound of the
Baskervilles” or “The Purloined Letter”. “It would be rather more difficult
not to,” he wrote.

Still, the poet with the pipe (okay, no more quirky names for Ray) proved
himself wrong. Or rather he proved that he was right not to focus so much
on the mystery element and, instead, to build a mysterious atmosphere and a sardonic sense of humor. From the opening paragraph.

This is how he starts a long 1950 short story called “Red Wind”:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry
Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair
and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every
booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving
knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even
get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Like the opening paragraph of “Red Harvest,” this gives us all the elements
we’d expect. It also tells you a lot about the narrator and his lifestyle.
The booze parties, and the sense of being gypped at the cocktail lounge.

But the opening paragraph which might be said to define an entire genre ––
and the sub-genres of attempts to copy the true representatives of the
genre, and also to parody it –– starts Chandler’s 1949 novel “The Little
Sister”:

The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: “*Philip
Marlowe…Investigations*.” It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a
reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the
year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is
locked, but next to it is another door with the same legend which is not
locked. Come on in –– there’s nobody in here but me and a big bluebottle
fly. But not if you’re from Manhattan, Kansas.

That’s now a staple of the genre and, just as much, of its parodic/iconic
avatar –– the detective innocently awaiting the moment when the lady arrives (or in this case, telephones) his shabby office. But what makes it so compelling is the voice of Marlowe, with its sense of regret at having become involved in the story and its unspoken acknowledgement of the inevitability of a repeat performance. After all, if Marlowe truly learned the lessons he claims to have taken on board, he wouldn’t be who he is. He’d be corrupted or cynical. Of course he’s neither.

It’s this subtext of honor (the knight in shining armor element of Marlowe’s character, as Chandler called it) that allowed the Epistolarian of Evil (sorry, I said I wouldn’t do that again, didn’t I) to elevate himself above the many who have copied him.

Music is notoriously difficult to capture in prose; Matt Rees tries valiantly, elegantly, and for the most part successfully to do justice to a composer who is regarded — and not just by me — as a deity. Rees himself comes off in interviews as gently eccentric: “I write standing up, doing yoga stretches, and listening to Mozart,” he confides. I think Wolfgang would have liked that.

What makes a great first paragraph? And which are the greatest? We all have favorites, some of which have become clichéd –– as happens to anything, whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, or if you grew up in a family that was unhappy in its own way. See what I mean?

In general it’s hard to beat Hemingway’s opening to “The Sun Also Rises” for laying out the narrator’s character, as well as the character being described: “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed with that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.”

But what about crime fiction? Over the next few weeks, I’m going to look at some of the best first lines and paragraphs in the genre. Next week, we’ll do a little Chandler (how did you guess?) and then we’ll be on to Simenon, who was a nasty enough man to write perfectly bitter downbeat prose from the very start of his books.

Let’s begin, though, with the man who in many ways beats them all: Dashiell Hammett.

I bet you think I’m going to talk about “The Maltese Falcon,” which in the first paragraph describes Sam Spade as looking “rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.”

But I’m not.

No, we’re going to have a quick gander at the opening of “Red Harvest,” Hammett’s first novel, in which his Continental Op heads to a corrupt small town. It starts this way:

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

Here we get the introduction to the Op and a lot of insight into him. We learn that he’s a man who has been drinking in a bar in Butte, which implies that he likes rough places and cheap alcohol. He knows the jokes thieves make and so we learn that the “men who could manage their r’s” were thieves too. We also get our introduction to Personville, which is after all to be a central character, as it were, in the book.

Most important, perhaps, given that this was Hammett’s first full-length novel: We get the voice. The voice of Hammett and the Op. The worldly, experienced voice of a man who has mixed with criminals long enough to have heard repeated references to one small town over the course of years. A man who, in the course of the book, will do criminal things for decent ends.

It also has that Hammett trademark: the kicker in the final sentence of the opening paragraph (note that the “blond Satan” does this for “The Maltese Falcon.”) If a writer’s trying to hook a reader into his book with this first paragraph –– on the basis that it’s as far as a casual browser will bother to read –– he has to view the opening paragraph the way a journalist does his lead. It must include information about the kind of book it is and where it might be going. But it must also give us a clever line that jumps our eye further into the book –– once you’ve read the second paragraph, you’ll probably figure you ought to buy it.

Unless, that is, you’re one of those bums who doesn’t buy books and reads them in bookshops without paying for them. If you’re one of those guys, then hear this: I won’t be copying out any more of “Red Harvest” on this blog. Buy it and read it.

Next week: Part 2 –– Big Ray C. Meantime, see if you can guess which Chandler book gets the nod for the best opening paragraph.

You can’t help but feel the amount of time and devotion that went into crafting this novel. Rees writes in beautiful, sweeping prose and transports the reader to Vienna’s streets in 1791. I learned so much and enjoyed the story as well. I highly recommend this book to fans of historical fiction, mysteries, and classical music.

Life in the Thumb is, if anything, even more stellar in its praise:

I was totally immersed into this story and didn’t want it to end. You should all know by now that I make a habit of reading “About the book or Afterwards” before diving into the story. I’m always glad that I do because it has really added to my enjoyment of the story. I did what the author suggested and listened to specially selected music. I think it really helped to put me into the mood and captured the time period perfectly. I highly recommend this book to lovers of music, intrigue, mystery and beautifully written historical fiction!

The fabulous Campaign for the American Reader of Marshal Zeringue features me on the Writers Read blog. I’ve been reading Olen Steinhauer, Barry Unsworth and Graham Greene. Find out which books and why.