Wanted: A killer first page

I'm trying to write a first page for a book I'm working on. It's got to be so gripping that anyone who reads it can't help but read on, desperate to know more. In what could be described as a 'ground breaking web experiment' I'm going to post the first page and see what the people of the Internet think, all 4 and a half of you who read this blog.

If you like it, it stays. If not I will start again.

So here it is.

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I looked down the cliff, and realised I was going to die.

“So how fucked are the brakes Henry?” I asked.

“Gone,” replied Henry “we’ve got nothing.”

“Just to confirm, we are both knackered, it’s starting to get dark and we have to drive down one of the most dangerous mountain passes in the Alps in a Volvo that’s older than I am and we don’t have any brakes?”

“It’s foggy too, oh and I think the offside wheel bearing is going.”

I was going to die, and what made it worse, I kept thinking of that woman.

To clear my head I looked behind us; the ancient Volvo was burbling away happily and occasionally plinking to itself. Over the last few days the car’s strange mechanical failings had been a constant source of amusement and now it was going to kill us. The skull and crossbones we had painted on it seemed a bit ironic now.

I caught myself wondering what she would be doing right now and that made me angry. I wanted my last thoughts to be at least of someone I liked, not of her.

“Well I’m going to change my shirt,” I said to Henry and the mountain side. We hadn’t seen another car for hours so it felt like we were the only people on the planet.

“Why?”

“If I’m going to die, there doesn’t seem like much point in saving my best shirt for later.”

As I put on the shirt I thought about how I had ended up here. I tried to think back through the events to find the one that led to me facing a really stupid death. Where did it all start? Was it the fake Nazis, the Transvestite builder or the porn star? No, it was further back then that. Before I became any sort of womaniser, and way before I met her.

No it all started a long while ago, on another hillside, in Scotland.