I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn't help--I was fresh out of salami.

- John Farmer, winner of the 2022 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a challenge to write "an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written"