As to a great opening I haven't listed there, following are a few of "my" favorites --

One of my favorites is from Frederick Forsythe's THE FIST OF GOD

The man with ten minutes left to live was laughing.

from HUNTING DOWN AMANDA by Andrew Klavan

This story begins on a summer's day in Hell.

The day was July thirteenth to be exact. And Hell was a little town called Hunnicut, Massachusetts.

Before it turned into Hell, it was actually kind of a nice place....

from GLORY SEASON by David Brin

Twenty-six months before her second birthday, Maia learned the true difference between winter and summer.

It wasn't simply the weather, or the way hot-season lightning storms used to crackle amid tall ships anchored in the harbor. Nor even the eye-tingling stab of Wengal -- so distinct from other stars.

from SOCIAL CRIMES by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

Murder was never my goal in life. I'm a very sentimenal person at heart. I cry in old movies. I love animals and children. I'm a pushover for a beggar in the street. So if anyone had told me five years ago that I could have willfully and with mailce aforethought killed a fellow human being, I could have said they were crazy. But life has suprises in store for all of us, not the least is the gradual discovery of who we really are and what we are capable of. However, allow me to dwell for a moment on that last evening of what I think of as my innocence.

from THE IRON DRAGON'S DAUGHTER by Michael Swanwick

The changeling's decision to steal a dragon and escape was born, though she did not know it then, the night the children met to plot the death of their supervisor.

She had lived in the steam dragon plant for as long as she could remember. Each down she was marched with the other indentured minors....

Any comments on any of those?

from NO WAY TO TREAT A FIRST LADY by Christoper Buckley

opening of chapter 1

His secretary announced simply, "It's her."

There was no ambiguity as to who "her" might be, not after the force twelve media storm of the previous weeks. The country was convulsed. Seven-eighths of the nation's front pages and the evening news was devoted to it. If war had broken out with Russia AND China, it might have made page two.

And here's one that sets the scene in the first sentence of dialogue

from SS-GB by Len Deighton

Chapter One

"Himmler's got the King locked up in the Tower of London," said Harry Woods. "But now the German Generals say the army should guard him."

The other man busied himself with the papers on his deak and made no comment. He thumped the rubber stamp into the pad and then onto the docket. "Scotland Yard. 11 Nov. 1941." It was incredible that the war had started only two years ago. Now it was over; the fighting finished....

The SS-GB by Len Deighton would grab me most, simply because the subject matter would be facinating to me, although the First Lady would be fairly compulsive reading!

The others are good (or great) but not my genre...

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