" ... how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth"

[larryhammer]

One need only read the first paragraph to realize it's written by a master:

The picturesque village of Rudge-in-the-Vale dozed in the summer sunshine. Along its narrow High Street the only signs of life were a cat stropping its backbone against the Jubilee Trough, some flies doing deep-breathing exercises on the hot window-sills, and a little group of serious thinkers who, propped up against the wall of the Carmondy Arms, were waiting for that establishment to open. At no time is there ever much doing in Rudge's main thoroughfare, but the hour at which a stranger, entering it, is least likely to suffer the illusion that he has strayed into Broadway, Piccadilly, or Rue de Rivoli is at two o'clock on a warm afternoon in July.

See?

The master in question is P.G. Wodehouse, writing in 1929 at the height of his powers. The book is Money for Nothing, but aside from knowing that it's not a Bertie Wooster or Blandings story, the actual volume is not particularly relevant. Nor is the opening's ostensible purpose -- to give the setting -- as Wodehouse stories are set in either of two locations: London or a quiet backwater which is is precisely located only to establish that it is not Town, but Country. Its real purpose to show us we are in safely the hands of a master, one who can make one snicker at least three times in as many sentences.

The opening of a story does not need to start with action, nor even with a hook. It just needs to start good.

And now if you'll excuse me, I've some Jazz Age fluffery to indulge in.

---L.