Not to get too carried away with this, but...
Charlotte's Web:
"Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. And then the murders began.
Ulysses (James Joyce):
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. And then the murders began.
Mrs. Dalloway:
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. And then the murders began.
The Old Man and the Sea:
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. And then the murders began.
Catch-22:
It was love at first sight. And then the murders began.
Go Tell It on the Mountain:
Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. And then the murders began.
The Luck of the Bodkins:
Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. And then the murders began.
Kor