I definitely agree with novels starting an ending in the middle of things/life. If you think about it, there's never really one true beginning. Everything starts somewhere, but that start came from somewhere too.
I do like to start in the middle and then catch up with things previous to that, during the story. I agree that if you're going to start with dialogue, it has to be done right. For me, that means a short amount of dialogue which puts you right in the middle of something. In my case, it was the simple angry sentence of someone demanding to be released which then took us on to a short explanation of the character doing the holding.
Come to think of it, my second novel (what a joke; I haven't finished whipping the first one into shape yet) starts with a line of dialogue, and I plan to have it end with the same line in a slightly different form. Well, not exactly. It'll be the next-to-the-last line. Close enough. I think it'll tie things up very nicely. Hope readers will agree.
