First lines. I love them. Some people collect coins or stamps, I collect first lines. Night Theater has an excellent first line: “The day the dead visited the surgeon, the air in his clinic was laced with formaldehyde.” Isn’t it a beauty? That first line tantalizes the reader, as does the premise. It’s the kind of concept that would make a perfect Twilight Zone episode, or a great low-budget horror movie. An irascible doctor working at night in a tiny clinic in an impoverished Indian village is visited by three murdered people. If he can sew and treat their wounds properly, they’ll be able to come back to life. But he only has until dawn. A blurb on the back of my copy promised me a “thrilling” time. But the concept, though thrilling, does not move in the way of a thriller. There’s a rather slow feeling to all the proceedings, this despite the need for three major surgeries in the span of a few hours. The drama necessary to carry such a claustrophobic scenario doesn’t manifest. Part of
The Y'allywood Reporter
Your Next Scene