What hooks you?

The first two sentences of two different novels:

1) The over-heated engine of the Chrysler was still ticking when Katie and her younger sister, Chrissie, ran to the edge of the dock to watch their father disappear under the surface. The wood was warm under their feet, and the lake stretched out before them like a canvas.

2)The vultures circled patiently above the trees that lined the drainage ditch on the Sopal family farm, with the deepest part of the gully the pivot point of their compass. In spring it would be a respectable creek flowing into the Black River, but now it was just a ditch.