"... And then the murders began."

[Róisín]

Yastreb, didn’t know you had read the Tain. I found it bleakly ironic that their pillow talk leads to such a devastating war. Even gets her pet squirrel killed.

[Lee M]

Sir Henry Limpkin's servant had brought him word of the proposed meeting at a little past midnight; he had been sitting in his study sometimes drowsing, but he had been fully awake when the man entered and thus did not fly into his customary rage. An Office of Reconstruction officer values his sleep as some do pearls, but tonight it was not to be had. And then the murders began.
--Mark S. Geston, Lords of the Starship.
(A fairly accurate assessment, given the complex Machiavellian scheme that leads to the novel's climactic apocalyptageddon.)

NB Preface omitted; above text from first edition, slightly abridged in reprints.

[Yastreb]

San Francisco Bay shimmered under a brilliant blue sky on the morning of 15 May 1917, yet Captain John Stanley Cameron was plagued by a nagging superstition as he guided his three-masted barque, the Beluga, out through the heads and into the Pacific Ocean. And then the murders began.
Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen, The Wolf

"This place stinks!" my scaly mentor snarled, glaring out of the window at the rain. And then the murders began.
Robert Asprin, Myth Directions.

[thegreyarea]

Guilford Law turned fourteen the night the world changed.
It was the watershed of historical time, the night that divided all that followed from everything that went before, but before it was any of that, it was only his birthday. And then the murders began.

Robert Charles Wilson, Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century.

(this is a great book. I'd go straigth to reread it if there weren't so many others in my TBR list...)


You know more than you think you do. Your family is growing and changing. You want to be the best parent you can be, but it’s not always clear what’s best. Everywhere you turn there are experts telling you what to do. The problem is, they often don’t agree with each other. And then the sleepless nights murders began.

Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Owner's Manual Care

(never read it. But lots of people don't read owner's manuals anyway   )
(And the underline in the beginning is really there in the book)

[thegreyarea]

Gothan City was cold shafts of concrete lit by cold moonlight, windswept and bottomless, fading to a cloud bank of city lights, a wet, white mist, miles below me. The street sounds were a soft, sad roar, unbroken and unchanging.
And then the murders began.

Frank Miller, Batman: Year One


I've got the home stretch all to myself when the readings stop making sense. I switch to manual... but the computer crosses its own circuits and refuses to let go. I coax it.
And then the murders began.

Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns


"Are you sure we should be so far from the castle, Lord Ozaki? It's not safe..."
And then the murders began.

Frank Miller, Ronin


Three amazing graphic novels by Frank Miller. 
Ronin (1987), my first contat with his work* changed the way I saw comics. The seventeen years old me found, with great surprise and joy, that the "comic" format could reach much further than the usual DC/Marvel productions that were prevalent in Brazil and some europeans like Goscinny and Uderzo (Asterix), Goscinny and Morris (Lucky Luke), Hergé (Tin Tin) or Jacobs (Blake and Mortimer)** that I knew from my trips to Portugal. The most "artistic" graphic novels I was aware back then was Christin and Mézières' Valerian. (which is good, but obviously I also didn't know about Enki Bilal's fascinating work...)

* Living in Brazil didn't help, and the lack of that thing called Internet (as we know it) neither...
** I still love all those, of course. Few things made me laugh so much as Asterix...

[Yastreb]

They both wore rubber masks.
Identical.
And then the murders began.
Dick Francis, Bonecrack

"Cripes!" said Sergeant Templeton, stumbling over his mess-tin as he stepped back for a better view, "cripes, they can't be real! They're only dummies!" And then the murders began.
W. B. Thomas, Dare To Be Free

[Yastreb]

The waiter was, in fact, waiting, with his trolley of liqueurs and and his boxes of cigars.
"Would you care for a brandy, Mr Cuthbertson? Or a cigar?" Patrick asked his guest.
And then the murders began.
Constantine Fitz Gibbon, When The Kissing Had To Stop

Suleiman's titles resounded through the high council chamber like a roll of drums: “Sultan of the Ottomans, Allah's deputy on earth, Lord of the Lords of this world, Possessor of men's necks, King of believers and unbelievers, King of Kings, Emperor of the East and the West, Majestic Caesar, Emperor of the Chakans of great authority, Prince and Lord of the most happy constellation, Seal of victory, Refuge of all the people in the whole entire world, the Shadow of the Almighty dispensing quiet on the Earth.” And then the murders began.
Ernle Bradford, The Great Siege

[thegreyarea]

It had thought it would be safe out here, just one more ambiently black speck deep-chilled in the vast veil of icy debris wrapping the outer reaches of the system like a frozen, tenuous shroud of tissue. And then the murders began.

Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist

The waiter was, in fact, waiting...

Suleiman's titles resounded through the high council chamber like a roll of drums: ... Seal of victory...

Let's all hail the Seal of Victory! 

Spoiler: show

(and what a great set of titles! Daenerys Targaryen would be jelous...)

[dmeck7755]

Simon Kress lived alone in a sprawling manor house among the dry, rocky hills fifty kilometers from the city .. And then the murders began.

(Sandkings by George R.R. Martin. NOT a GOT story; pretty mentally creepy in some ways )

[Yastreb]

Loring walked out of the side entrance of the Justice Department and looked for a taxi. And then the murders began.
Robert Ludlum, The Matlock Paper

He was never late. Each evening when the German arrived with his old Mauser, his frayed leather binocular case and his dinner pail, the inhabitants of the village of May-et-Multien knew it was six o'clock. And then the murders began.
Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre, Is Paris Burning?

[thegreyarea]

The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days. Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood, and then the murders began.

Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem.

(Everyone seems to think wonders of this one... Already on the shelf, waiting for its turn... Poor book has a long wait ahead )

"What’s two plus two?”
Something about the question irritates me. I’m tired. I drift back to sleep.
A few minutes pass, then I hear it again.
“What’s two plus two?”
And then the murders began.

Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

(this is the one I'm presently reading, and after the first quarter I can already say that's pretty good!  )

[Yastreb]

In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the great Empire founded in India by Babur the Tiger and Akbar was in decline, the commanders of the armies of India became perplexed. And then the murders began.
Shelford Bidwell, Swords For Hire

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.
And then the murders began.
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

[thegreyarea]

Nat could have used a cigarette, but company policy forbade smoking in the store, so all she could do was get more and more nervous. And then the murders began.

Ted Chiang, Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom (on Exhalation)

[Yastreb]

On a misty may midnight in the year 1876, three men emerged from a fashionable address in Piccadilly with top hats on their heads, money in their pockets and burglary, on a grand scale, on their minds. And then the murders began.
Ben Macintyre, The Napoleon Of Crime

Wolfwind emerged from the pre-dawn sea mist like a wraith slowly taking physical form. And then the murders began.
John Flanagan, Brotherband: The Outcasts

[Lazerbird]

I went out on the road, to chase my dream, at the age of nine. And then the murders began.
- Ken Kaufman, The Kingbird Highway
to be fair, what are you expecting hitchhiking in the 60s ?
 
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards. From the towns in its high valleys and the ports on its dark narrow bays many a Gontishman has gone forth to serve the Lords of the Archipelago. And then the murders began. 
- A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

They were abandoning him. The wounded man knew it when he looked at the boy, who looked down, then away, unwilling to hold his gaze. And then the murders began.
- The Revenant, Michael Punke