Opening paragraphs............

I was in a deep sleep, alone aboard my houseboat, alone in the half acre of bed, alone in a sweaty dream of chase, fear, and monstrous predators.  A shot rang off steel bars.  Another.   I came bursting up out of sleep to hear the secretive sound of the little bell which rings at my bedside when anyone steps aboard The Busted Flush.  It was almost four in the morning.
-John D. MacDonald,  The Dreadful Lemon Sky