A Facebook request, to post the opening paragraphs of your works of fiction

Here are the opening paragraphs of the three Gideon Marshall Mysteries. The third one, THE EARTHQUAKE LADY, should be available as an e-book within a couple of weeks:

A medley of opening paragraphs:

Opening paragraph of BE CAREFUL, DR. RENNER (available as both e-book and print on demand; first in the Gideon Marshall Mystery Series):

“Good morning, Dr. Marshall. I’m Leonard Branch from Campus Security.”

That’s how my day started. The hand he extended held a badge. He was not in uniform. After the last couple of days, it’s obvious why he was here, namely, to talk about my predecessor, the infamous Clyde Renner.

From the Prologue of THE STITCHER FILE (available as both e-book and print on demand; second in the Gideon Marshall Mystery Series):

As she’d done almost every working day for the past year, Dr. Aparajita Chatterjee, medical examiner for Polk County, Iowa, closed her file on the geologist Clyde Renner but let it sit on her desk for a full ten minutes, simply thinking about what the autopsy results implied, wondering who she should ask for an independent interpretation of the results, and sometimes shaking her head. She’d never seen a case like this one—so simple and obvious yet so complex, with so many people involved and such an unsatisfying set of conclusions, especially with those traces of veterinary pharmaceuticals in his blood. The unusual mix of attorneys, donors, and hackers who showed up at the college immediately after Renner’s death, and the apparent reasons for their interest in Renner’s work, only added to Dr. Chatterjee’s feeling that there was more to the scientist’s demise than just a routine heart attack and stroke.

Opening paragraph of THE EARTHQUAKE LADY, a work in progress (the third in the Gideon Marshall Mystery Series):

“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” she said, extending her hand. I remembered that hand, from a year and a half ago, as being particularly warm. Three silver bracelets slid down her arm and rested against her wrist as she reached across my desk. Her sari was deep blue with gold embroidery along the edges. I had not forgotten her eyes—irises so dark they were almost black—or her voice, the deep lilt, the tone, the inflections, all telling me more about my cloistered Ivory Tower world, although not intentionally, I’m sure, than her words. Dr. Aparajita Chatterjee, Polk County medical examiner, introduced her companion. “This is detective Burkholder from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.”