by James Scott Bell

Greetings, thrill seekers. We have another first page for critique. Give it a read and join me on the other side.

Title: PROTECTED PERSONS. Genre: Thriller.

PART ONE — NATURAL CAUSES

Prologue

Davos, Switzerland. 11:40. Pulse 61.

The Prime Minister of Canada has nine minutes to live, and he is going to spend one of them on a joke.

His name is Marc Delorme. I watch him on a television with the sound off, in a cheap hotel room across town from the World Economic Forum. It is late January. The clock in the corner of the screen says twenty to twelve.

I know when he will die because I chose the minute: eleven forty-nine, in the main hall, four minutes before the end of his speech.

The voice in my head does not choose the names, or the minute. I do. It came to me in a hospital, in a white room, after a bomb, when I could not move my hands or remember my own name. It still comes with a hum behind my left ear, low and steady, like a fridge in an empty flat. It never tells me who. Mostly it says the same few sentences it has always said, in the even voice of someone reading out a rule.

Those who stand in the way must be removed.

It must look like nature.

What they meant to say must not be heard.

The rest is my work. The newspapers tell me who stands in the way, and they are very helpful about it. They print it every week, with photographs: a face at a lectern, announcing that his country will build a network of its own and need nobody else’s. In the way of what, the voice has never said. I was a soldier for a long time, and a soldier with clear orders sleeps well.

***

JSB: We have here a promising opening salvo for an international thriller. It has a Day of the Jackal type feel. The First Person Present POV, if it holds for the entire book (I’m guessing it does not) presents some challenges (which are beyond the scope of this post). For one thing, it prevents cross-cutting to other POVs for suspense purposes. Well, not always. You can certainly mix POVs, using First Person for one character, and Third Person for others. James Patterson has done this, and he’s sold a few books.

But today we’re looking at this first page and our question is: would I want to read on?

With some tweaks, my answer is yes. So let’s tweak.

We’ve talked about prologues several times here at TKZ. See here, here, and here.

Critique group chatter often holds that editors and agents don’t like prologues, so never use them. Tush. A prologue can make a great hook if it is a scene that works well on its own.

In the past I’ve counseled writers not to use the label Prologue. Just give us the scene with no heading, then do Chapter 1 next (as in Harlan Coben’s Tell No One). I read a thriller that started with 0 (a prologue scene), then came 1, 2, 3 etc.

Your book has Parts, so that’s necessary to label. My advice is to ditch the word Prologue.

That leaves you with the place/time stamp. That’s fine. I was thrown by Pulse 61 at first, then figured it’s the narrator describing his own. This seems needlessly confusing. If the guy is tracking his own pulse, let him tell us in the narrative. Maybe this is to be a recurring stamp. If so, I’d get tired of it.

The Prime Minister of Canada has nine minutes to live, and he is going to spend one of them on a joke.

I’d cut the last part. The Prime Minister of Canada has nine minutes to live. Boom. Let it stand alone. The part about the joke dilutes the impact.

His name is Marc Delorme. I watch him on a television with the sound off, in a cheap hotel room across town from the World Economic Forum. It is late January. The clock in the corner of the screen says twenty to twelve.

Good. You’ve given us the essential setting for the narrator, and main event, the World Economic Forum.

I know when he will die because I chose the minute: eleven forty-nine, in the main hall, four minutes before the end of his speech.

I’m interested. How has the narrator chosen the time, and how will he pull it off?

The voice in my head does not choose the names, or the minute. I do. It came to me in a hospital, in a white room, after a bomb, when I could not move my hands or remember my own name.

Good, marbled-in backstory. Some teachers say “No backstory in the opening!” I don’t subscribe to that. But I do counsel using it sparingly in the first few pages so it does not slow down the action. Here we have a guy who survived a bomb and gets a voice in his head. Voice? What’s that about? At this point it is a mystery, and that’s how I’d leave it for the moment. Unanswered questions are a great way to make a reader turn the page. You can reveal more about the voice later.

Give us some action now. You can save the rest of this page for later. But let’s have a look anyway:

It still comes with a hum behind my left ear, low and steady, like a fridge in an empty flat. It never tells me who. Mostly it says the same few sentences it has always said, in the even voice of someone reading out a rule.

Those who stand in the way must be removed.

It must look like nature.

What they meant to say must not be heard.

I like a fridge in an empty flat. That’s a great way to describe this mysterious voice.

For the three lines of the voice, I’d go ahead and use italics. Italics can be helpful, IMO, unless they come in big blocks. Yours do not. Italics would help readers “hear” the voice.

The rest is my work. The newspapers tell me who stands in the way, and they are very helpful about it. They print it every week, with photographs: a face at a lectern, announcing that his country will build a network of its own and need nobody else’s. In the way of what, the voice has never said. I was a soldier for a long time, and a soldier with clear orders sleeps well.

This paragraph is all exposition, and we don’t need it yet. My axiom is: Act first, explain later. What this first page needs is a character in motion, not in explanation.

All that said, I am intrigued. We have an impending assassination on a world stage, and a guy who hears a voice, and who is somehow going to make this happen. I would turn this page.

How about you, TKZers?