Hmmm. This is an interesting exercise. I have three and despite the fact they're very different books I can see I open them all in the same way. Why have I never noticed that before? Might be time to try something different.
Gabriel crouched on bended knee, hunched against cold stone above an ancient alley fetid with the smell of piss, vomit, and cooked sausage. A door slammed in the distance, and the sound of cursing, a man’s, and then a woman’s, was followed by slaps, screams, and then silence. Far away, the sound of a guitar drifted to him, melancholy in the cold night air.
Night envelopes the coast, pregnant and still, save for the silent flitting of hunting birds, and the panicked rustle and squeak of their desperate prey. The mournful call of a buoy sounds in the distance, muffled by a creeping bank of fog that all but obscures a lone house, huddled on the promontory below. The moon, a heavy globe of silver light hovering over a blue-black horizon, paints a ghostly highway, stretching across the rippling water, cutting through cloud and mist and stopping at the door.
Jamie Sinclair pushed back his visor and surveyed the field. The air was crisp, sharp with the acrid smell of smoke and the bitter taste of winter. A cold sleet was falling, and icy drops of water slithered down his back.
