Hook, Line, & Sinker Blogfest Entry...better late than never!

*The writing sample appearing here involves some graphic subject matter.  It is not a study in gore, but rather a topic that might bother some.  Please skip if this describes you.*

Today's post is a part of Monday's Hook, Line, and Sinker Blogfest, hosted by Justin Parente at In My Write Mind.  I missed the deadline, but thought I'd participate anyway.  If you have a chance, read through the entries--some really great hooks (lines and sinkers)!

This is from a possible crime description in my Nashville/Det. Ryan Bell series.  It is merely a WIP.  Go ahead, tear it apart!

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   Hell's Half Acre has come a long way.
   Where prostitutes and bootleggers once plied their trade, rarely does a footstep now press the grass.  Where low-rent apartments and outdoor privies once squatted, now stand fringed chestnuts and budding pear trees.  Gambling, drinking, and whoring were once the nature of this slope.   Now the lawn stretches from the Tennessee Capitol to the edge of James Robertson Boulevard, with nary a non-political crime to break up its gentle roll.
   Until now.
   Where drunken johns and thieves once strolled, where Union troops before them camped mid-march, where reknowned architect William Strickland watched the cornerstone of his last design laid, today the tiny body of a child lies, somehow more dead than all the long-decayed historical figures who came before her.
   It is not a gruesome sight at first glance.  She lies curled on her left side, dimpled arms fold under her chin.  Mahogany locks fall down her jawline, framing the plump face.  Pristine garments wrap the little body: a high-necked gown more fitting to the nineteenth century than the twenty-first, dress slippers as thin as ballet shoes.
   Neither is the sight angelic.  Though the killer may have wished it, the child's face does not appear in repose, but rather stricken with illness.  Her skin is greyish next to the ivory lace gown.  Bruises show on her once-rosy cheeks, beneath shadowed eyes and a forehead marred by one, long beaded trail of dry blood.
   She rests on the lawn in full display to drivers on James Robertson.  If she were alive, her view of the Bicentennial Mall would be spectacular.

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