Best advice ever to aspiring novelists, by sci-fi/horror writer Marc Laidlaw: the start of books is vastly improved if you add “and then the murders began”.

One sunny Sunday, the caterpillar was hatched out of a tiny egg. He was very hungry. And then the murders began. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.

Mr & Mrs Dursley, of number 4, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. And then the murders began. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And then the murders began. The Bible.

It was the best of times, it was at the worst of times. And then the murders began. A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. And then the murders began. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. And then the murders began. Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell.