"We drove past Tiny Polski's mansion house to the main road, and then the five miles into Northampton, Father talking the whole way about savages and the awfulness of America -- how it got turned into a dope-taking, door-locking, ulcerated danger zone of rabid scavengers and criminal millionaires and moral sneaks."
-- The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux.
Now that's some kind of opening sentence!
This book is on the Anthony Burgess list of Top 99 novels, and it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.