"A Bitter Wind"

James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle World War II series, historical mysteries set within the Allied High Command during the Second World War. The series began with Billy Boyle, which takes place in England and Norway in 1942.

Benn applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Bitter Wind, the twentieth installment of the Billy Boyle series, with the following results:

From page 69:

“Did you check the carbon paper?” Diana said. “You never know.”

No, you never do. I remembered a clue once being found on carbon paper, but I think that was in a movie. Real life is never that easy, but I pulled out the dark, flimsy sheets to check them. The request for the Mandrel jammer was right on top, a worn, well-used sheet that had seen its final roll around the platen. Even so, I could make out the salutation to the 101 Squadron supply officer. The sheet under that was the memo to Brockman’s commanding officer at the 36th, the unit’s name clearly visible on the fresh page.

“Wait a minute,” I said, and set the sheets down side by side. “Brockman typed this one yesterday, using a new piece of carbon paper. He typed the supply request the day before, using a sheet that was on its last legs.”

“Very economical of him,” Diana said as she waited for me to make my point.

“This is how they came out of the tray,” I said, and placed the well-used sheet on top.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “It’s in the wrong order. Someone went through the carbon papers to see what the major had typed. Someone who got here before us.”

“Which means Brockman took both the original and carbon copy with him, which is why our intruder was reduced to riffling through the carbon paper,” I said.

“Or Major Brockman made a simple mistake,” Diana said with a sigh. “Out of character, but still possible. This is thin gruel, Billy.”

At first glance, this passage may look like thin gruel indeed for establishing the value of the Page 69 Test. It’s a bit dry and workmanlike, with a previously defined technical term laid out here much like a puzzling tidbit.

But then again, a murder investigation is full of tedious factchecking and the meticulous sifting of potential clues. And that’s exactly what’s going on here. Major Brockman is the murder victim—the first, that is—found early in the book. The Mandrel jammer is a piece of top secret electronic countermeasures hardware, designed to overwhelm German early warning radar systems. Brockman’s body was found with highly classified documents concerning electronic countermeasures used by the Royal Air Force in his pocket; documents that should never have left the base.

Which brings Billy and Diana sifting through routine paperwork in order to be certain all of the electronic warfare components are exactly where they should be. Dull, boring, and inconclusive, like much of real life.

So the test works well enough. The theoretical browser will know there’s already been a murder and that our detectives are searching for clues in a realistic fashion. Plus, there’s the added nostalgic sensation of handling carbon paper for those of an age to remember.

But there’s one last section of page 69 worth a mention:

“If we didn’t find him with his head bashed in, I’d agree it was just a mistake. But you’re right, it’s not much,” I said. “This must have something to do with what Conan Doyle had you investigating.”

Conan Doyle? If our browser has paid attention to the very end of the page, that name is sure to attract attention. This is a mystery, after all. The Conan Doyle in question is Squadron Officer Jean Conan Doyle, daughter of Sir Arthur, and in real life an intelligence officer with the Royal Air Force during World War II, and she plays an active role in this novel.

The Page 69 Test: passed, with flying colors.

Learn more about the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery Series at James R. Benn's website.

The Page 99 Test: The First Wave.

The Page 69 Test: Evil for Evil.

The Page 69 Test: Rag and Bone.

My Book, The Movie: Death's Door.

The Page 69 Test: The White Ghost.

The Page 69 Test: Blue Madonna.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2016).

Q&A with James R. Benn.

The Page 69 Test: Proud Sorrows.

The Page 69 Test: The Phantom Patrol.

Writers Read: James R. Benn (September 2024).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Literati"

USA Today bestselling author Susan Coll is the author of eight novels, including The Literati, Real Life & Other Fictions, and Bookish People. Her other books include The Stager, Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and Karlmarx.com.

Coll applied the Page 69 Test to The Literati and reported the following:

On page 69 of The Literati, Clemi – the 26-year-old protagonist who has just begun a new job as the programs director of a troubled literary nonprofit --- is working with Skylar, the intern, to try to guess the passwords for the nonprofit’s bank accounts so that they can pay the caterer for the forthcoming awards gala. Once they succeed, the two-step verification number is sent to the landline, which serves as an example of how antiquated the systems are at WLNP---Washington Literary Nonprofit. The two women then discover that the accounts they have managed to access have essentially been drained.

Page 69 is dialogue driven, so it doesn’t provide much context, and yet it is a surprisingly useful microcosm of the book. The page captures the comically dysfunctional state of WLNP, and it also has Clemi sneezing, which is a nod to her cat allergies and another of the novel’s plot points.

As a bonus, the page opens with the sentence, “OMG, Bob’s your uncle,” which was a line that I wanted to work into the novel. Around the time that I was writing this book I heard someone use this phrase. I was unfamiliar with it at the time, but it is apparently a British expression that means something along the lines of “and there you have it.” Or in the book, I’ve just successfully just hacked my way into the bank account.

Visit Susan Coll's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Coll & Zoe.

The Page 69 Test: Acceptance.

The Page 69 Test: Beach Week.

The Page 69 Test: The Stager.

The Page 69 Test: Real Life and Other Fictions.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Room of Lost Steps"

Simon Tolkien is the grandson of JRR Tolkien and a director of the Tolkien Estate. He is also series consultant for the Amazon series, The Rings of Power. He studied Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford and went on to become a London barrister specializing in criminal defense. He left the law to become a writer in 2001 and has published five novels which mine the history of the first half of the last century to explore dark subjects – capital punishment, the Holocaust, the London Blitz and the Battle of the Somme. The epic coming-of-age story of Theo Sterling, set in 1930s New York, England and Spain, is being published in two volumes, The Palace at the End of the Sea and The Room of Lost Steps.

Tolkien applied the Page 69 Test to The Room of Lost Steps and shared the following:

From page 69:

Theo ate hunks of bread with olive oil and pieces of uncooked ham, washed down with water in a goatskin bag. Even before he’d finished, he felt his strength returning, and the men clapped him on the back. Friends now, when they would have shot him in cold blood at a nod from their leader five minutes before. They called the short man Ascaso, and Theo sensed that they would lay down their lives without hesitation if he gave them the word.

In a pew at the back, the wounded man had stopped crying out, and Theo wondered whether he was dead.

Ascaso was over by the main door of the church, which he had half opened to look out. He was smoking a cigarette, and the golden sunlight wreathed with the blue smoke to illuminate his diminutive figure as if he were an actor on a stage. The gunfire, muffled before, was now louder than ever.

Suddenly he shouted twice, calling out a name that sounded like Oliver, and ran out.

“Who’s that?” Theo asked.

“Juan García Oliver. He leads the other group,” said one of the men. “They crossed Chinatown farther up, so perhaps they didn’t lose so many when they came out. If we join together, then maybe it will be enough.” But he looked like he had no faith in what he was saying. A hundred men would be no match for machine guns protected by the walls of the barricade.

A couple of minutes later, Ascaso came back into the church. “Time to go,” he said. “We have a plan.”

He walked to the end of the church and leaned down over the man in the back pew, verifying that he’d died. He closed the man’s eyes and took his pistol and handed it to Theo with an ammunition clip. “Let’s hope you can shoot as well as you can run,” he said.

On the way out of the church, he flicked his burning cigarette into the font and laughed when he saw Theo flinch.

“This church is beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

Theo nodded, uncertain of the right response.

“It’s the oldest in Barcelona. A thirteenth-century Romanesque jewel, but tomorrow it will burn. All of them will. You’ll see.”

Page 69 of The Room of Lost Steps, reproduced above, conveys the tension of a short still interval between two episodes of street fighting on the first day of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona. The arresting image of the anarchist leader, Francisco Ascaso, standing in the doorway of the Sant Pau del Camp Church, wreathed in smoke and illuminated by sunlight, conveys the appeal that anarchism held for the hero of the novel, Theo Sterling, but Ascaso’s casual disrespect for the font and promise that the church will burn reveal his ruthlessness, intensified in Theo’s mind by the fact that Ascaso understands that it is unique and beautiful, “a thirteenth-century Romanesque jewel.”

Attraction and repulsion: the contradictory effect that anarchism has on Theo is a central theme of the novel. He admires the anarchists’ courageous resistance to fascism, but he distrusts the violent destruction that they espouse, and this ambivalence leads to an inability to believe and commit that undermines his relationship with the anarchist girl he loves, Maria Alvarez.

The Room of Lost Steps completes Theo’s coming-of-age journey that began in The Palace at the End of the Sea. His participation in the fighting in Barcelona cements his hatred of fascism, and convinces him that he can help to change the world. He volunteers to fight with the International Brigades and so completes the journey from illusion to disillusion that is the overarching thematic arc of the two novels. Page 69 describes an episode that is an essential step along that road and so passes Marshall McLuhan’s test with flying colors.

Visit Simon Tolkien's website.

Q&A with Simon Tolkien.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fiend"

Alma Katsu's novels include Red London, The Fervor, Red Widow, and The Deep. Prior to the publication of her first novel, she had a thirty-five-year long career as a senior intelligence analyst for several U.S. agencies, including the CIA and NSA, as well as RAND. Katsu is a graduate of the master's writing program at the Johns Hopkins University and received her bachelor's degree from Brandeis University. She lives in West Virginia with her husband and is a contributing reviewer for the Washington Post.

Katsu applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Fiend, with the following results:

From page 69:

Maybe Zef assumed Dardan would keep the other boys in line. But Dardan wasn’t a leader, not of this pack. He was just one of the boys at the periphery. Grateful to be part of the tribe. Conner Garrison—a god on the lacrosse field, the one the girls could not refuse—was the undisputed star of that little universe.

Dardan always burns with shame to remember that part.

He’s always felt guilty for what happened. He knows Zef is to blame for many things, but Conner Garrison’s death is not one of them.

Dardan’s shoulders slump. “I’m sorry but you just have to accept it for what it was: a freak accident. We were night skiing. We shouldn’t have been. We didn’t know the trails well enough. We were stupid. Egging each other one. Conner lost control.”

Garrison is almost trembling with rage. Dardan knows he wants to push back: Conner was an expert skier. There’s no way he would’ve done something so foolhardy. And lose control? He’d practically grown up with skis strapped to his feet.

But Andy Garrison wasn’t there. Dardan was. And he’s plunged back to that night. Following Conner’s screams though the trees and over boulders to the bottom of a sheer drop. Kneeling in the bloodied snow, not knowing what to do, fearing it was hopeless anyway. Headlamp sputtering in and out, running out of juice. Praying while he waited for the medics to show up. Conner unresponsive by the time he heard the medevac copper landing in the distance.

There is something else, too. Something Dardan has admitted to no one else save his father.

Page 69 is not a good example of the book as a whole; that is, it doesn’t reflect all the themes and key issues in the book, but it does give the reader insight into one important part of the story, that of Dardan, one of the major characters.

Here, Dardan is looking back at an incident that happened when he was 17. He’s 28 now and being groomed to take over his family’s empire. From this one scene, you get a sense of the many pressures facing Dardan—his strong, exacting father, the pressure that comes with being part of an extremely wealthy family—as well as a sense of Dardan’s character and, most importantly, his limitations.

Crisis is a good test of character. Being the only person on the scene of a deadly accident, the victim ostensibly a good friend (or maybe more of a frenemy) lets us see exactly what kind of person Dardan is. Most importantly, we know a challenge lies ahead of him and we see through this scene that he is not equal to that challenge. Like his frenemy Conner, he’s going to be crushed—we just don’t know yet how.

Visit Alma Katsu's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Taker.

My Book, The Movie: The Hunger.

The Page 69 Test: The Hunger.

Writers Read: Alma Katsu (March 2020).

The Page 69 Test: The Deep.

The Page 69 Test: Red Widow.

Q&A with Alma Katsu.

The Page 69 Test: The Fervor.

Writers Read: Alma Katsu (April 2022).

My Book, The Movie: Red London.

The Page 69 Test: Red London.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Everything We Could Do"

David McGlynn's books include the memoirs One Day You'll Thank Me and A Door in the Ocean, and the story collection The End of the Straight and Narrow. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar. He teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

McGlynn applied the Page 69 Test to his debut novel, Everything We Could Do, and reported the following:

Everything We Could Do is largely -- though not entirely -- set in a hospital, specifically in a neonatal intensive care unit that cares for premature and critically ill newborn children. I've been fascinated by the NICU for years: not only was my youngest son a NICU patient, but my wife worked as a NICU social worker for close to a decade. The babies treated in NICUs are quite often unfathomably small and live at what Diana Fei calls "the edge of life": too small to survive without intensive medical intervention. Yet life, it turns out, is a powerful force and medical advancements have learned how to treat, nurture, and incubate many of these tiny human beings until they're strong enough to live in the world. It's harrowing and frightening and redemptive and miraculous all at once.

Page 69 is the opening of Chapter 5. The protagonists of the story, Brooke and Harper Jensen, have been holding vigil beside their preemies' beds for several weeks -- long enough for initial shock to wear off and for them to learn the idiosyncrasies of the place. A mother arrives at the unit with her baby, not for treatment, but to visit the nurses and doctor who cared for him. The nurses, however, don't remember him, at least not at first, and instead pretend to marvel over his size and progress. Harper Jensen sees this artificial display of exuberance as an insult, and then as a sign that the baby must not have been in the unit for very long. On the next page -- page 70 -- the reader learns that's not the case. The baby boy was very premature, and sick, and required an unforeseen surgery to live. But in the months since he's left the NICU, he's grown -- a lot. The nurses don't recognize him not because they're callous or cold, but because he's healthy and thriving.

Everything We Could Do tries to present a realistic view of a world few people ever see or even know about. It was important to me to not turn away from the most difficult experiences, to bear witness to them. But throughout the novel are moments like the one found on page 69, in which rays of light and hope poke through, and the characters get glimpses of possible happy endings. It helps them to keep going, and (I hope) adds a little levity to a deadly serious world.

Visit David McGlynn's website.

Writers Read: David McGlynn.

Q&A with David McGlynn.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Mercy of Thin Air"

Ronlyn Domingue's critically acclaimed debut novel, The Mercy of Thin Air, was published in ten languages. It was a fiction finalist for the 2005 Borders Original Voices Award and 2006 SIBA Book Award, a long list nominee for the 2005 James Tiptree, Jr. Award (now known as the Otherwise Award), and a 2010 Costco Pennie’s Pick. The Keeper of Tales Trilogy, which can be read in any order, includes The Mapmaker's War, The Chronicle of Secret Riven, and The Plague Diaries.

Domingue applied the Page 69 Test to The Mercy of Thin Air and shared the following:

From The Mercy of Thin Air, page 69:

Amy didn’t watch the rest of the DVD Chloe had sent her, but I did. There were only a few minutes left. The footage was taken at a party. People waved at the camera and talked to Chloe, the voice behind the lens. The microphone hummed with music and chatter. The shot moved through a dining room next to a narrow kitchen doorway. On the wall behind Amy was a calendar, August 1992. She hugged the dark-haired young man, and he clearly didn’t want them to be interrupted. They shared a strangely intimate moment for such a celebratory atmosphere. He was talking, but his voice did not come through. I strained through the noise and read his lips--It’ll be okay, he said. We’ll have the whole drive up. Sex in at least one strange bed. He nudged her, and she smiled. Thanksgiving will be here before you know it. This is only temporary.

For several days after she hid the disc, the essence of another man billowed intermittently throughout the house. More often, she snapped her head toward doorways and furniture corners with no discernable reason why. Amy was not reacting to me, I knew: there was another reason for her jitters.

Within that time, Amy stopped watching Scott as he slept before she left for work. Then one morning, and another, and each one after, she didn’t kiss him goodbye. The only habit she kept was to keep him warm.

Does the Page 69 Test work for my novel? Absolutely it does on the level of theme—a refusal to confront the past. Amy hides a secret, as well as profound trauma, that will be revealed in the pages that follow. The narrator Razi Nolan—a ghost who wouldn’t call herself a ghost—struggles with similar buried troubles. On top of that, page 69 picks up on other aspects of the story such as heightened senses and matters of intimacy.

So much has changed since the novel was published in 2005—from technology to politics—that I wondered if it would hold up in light of that—and for the story itself. For the book’s twentieth anniversary, a friend invited me to do an interview on his podcast. I had to reread the book for the first time in about 10 years to get ready. In the opening minutes, he quoted several reviews, one I didn’t remember. “In a word: Timeless,” he said. I paused. Yes. Because, at the core, this story is about deep love among friends, family, and partners, The Mercy of Thin Air is truly timeless.

Visit Ronlyn Domingue's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Danger No Problem"

Cindy Fazzi is a Filipino American writer and former Associated Press reporter. She’s the author of the Domingo the Bounty Hunter series. Danger No Problem (book 1), previously titled Multo, was a finalist in the Best Literary category of the 2024 Silver Falchion Award. Book 2 is titled Sunday or the Highway.

Fazzi applied the Page 69 Test to Danger No Problem with the following results:

These are the first three paragraphs of page 69 of Danger No Problem, which follows Domingo, a Filipino American bounty hunter. Page 69 is the start of Chapter 8. It’s one of several chapters that begin with a first-person narrative by Domingo. He’s writing an advice book for people who want to immigrate to the United States based on his experience as an immigrant and his job finding fugitive undocumented immigrants.

THE PRESENT

Assimilation in America: You Are What You Eat

If you are what you eat, you must learn to like what native-born Americans eat. Mac and cheese, hot dogs and hamburgers, pizza, snickerdoodles and cupcakes, mashed potatoes, and lots of cereal. Mind you, I didn’t eat any of these things while growing up in Manila. Mamang still refuses to eat them even after two decades in America. She’s seventy years old; it’s too late to teach her new habits.

In the Philippines, we eat rice at every meal. We’ve thought of all the different ways to eat rice. Garlic rice, steamed rice, chicken rice porridge called arroz caldo, chocolate rice pudding called champorado, a rice cake called bibingka, a rice cake called puto, a rice cake called biko. Do I sound like Bubba talking about shrimp in Forrest Gump? Well, the point is I love rice, but I learned to eat other things here in America.

Unless you’re as old as my mother, your assimilation should include eating like an American. If you want to be accepted, you must embrace the norm. Appreciate the abundance around you. We’re lucky to live in the present America where a halal market sits next to an Italian bistro and an Indian restaurant, where you can buy hard-to-find sauces and spices in a Chinese or Mexican or Filipino store.

The Page 69 Test works in this case. It describes the protagonist, Domingo the bounty hunter, in his own words. In just a few paragraphs, readers learn the following:

• Domingo is from the Philippines; his mother is 70 years old, and she doesn’t like American food;
• He believes that you are what you eat, and therefore, food is an important part of assimilation for immigrants.
• He introduces Filipino cuisine by identifying some popular rice delicacies.
• He’s grateful for the abundance in America, as well as its cultural diversity.

The two-book Domingo the Bounty Hunter series features the first Filipino American and first brown immigrant hero in the bounty hunter trope. Both books tackle ripped-from-the- headlines immigration issues and themes of identity and belongingness.

In Danger No Problem, Domingo is looking for the only quarry that has ever eluded him. He’s chasing an undocumented biracial Filipino woman named Monica Reed for the third time. He has tried to catch Monica for different reasons in a span of almost two decades.

The book pits a dogged bounty hunter against a desperate undocumented woman in hiding. They are compatriots. They are both in the United States in pursuit of the American Dream, but their dreams are on collision course.

As a Filipino American immigrant, the topic of immigration is very close to my heart. I wrote the series to introduce readers to Filipino American characters because there are so few of them in books.

I also want readers to get a glimpse of the common struggles and aspirations of immigrants, whether legal or undocumented. For immigrants of color, regardless of status, it usually boils down to the need for respect and acceptance because they are told in so many ways that they don’t belong here.

Visit Cindy Fazzi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bees in June"

Elizabeth Bass Parman grew up entranced by family stories, such as the time her grandmother woke to find Eleanor Roosevelt making breakfast in her kitchen. She worked for many years as a reading specialist for a non-profit and spends her summers in a cottage by a Canadian lake. She has two grown daughters and lives outside her native Nashville with her husband.

Parman applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Bees in June, and reported the following:

From page 69:

AFTER SHE HAD SET THE LAST PAN ON THE DISH drainer, Rennie wiped her hands, slipped off her shoes, and went outside for her evening check on the peanuts, sunflowers, and pumpkins. The soft grass on her feet always grounded her, no matter how frazzled she felt. She inhaled deeply, drawing into her lungs the air that was full of the promise of summer. Soon enough the heat and humidity would become cloying, but for now she welcomed it like a friend. Her little plot of land shone in the golden-hour light. After resting with her uncle in the bee yard following his fall, she had found the energy to dig the holes for the seeds, with Poe circling his encouragement in the skies above her. She was pleased to have finally put in her garden, feeling like she was slowly syncing back into the rhythm of life.

The tender shoots were about eight inches tall, with the delicate oval leaves of the peanut plants resembling butterfly wings, while the bigger pumpkin leaves looked like green umbrellas protecting the smaller leaves underneath. The sunflowers were leaping skyward, taller than anything else growing. So different in appearance, all the leaves had one thing in common, the primal need to reach skyward, toward the sun.

What it conveys: Bees in June, set in the summer of 1969, is the story of Rennie Hendricks, a woman in an abusive marriage who is rediscovering her own joy and power after suffering a tragic loss. She finds solace in two places, the kitchen and her uncle’s bee yard, both mentioned on this page. Rennie is deeply connected to nature, especially when she is with the bees. This page references the idea of both healing the body by breathing air from beehives, a form of apitherapy and grounding, walking barefoot in grass, to further emphasize the restorative power of nature. She nurtures by providing delicious meals, both for the humans and for Poe, the crow she is growing the food for.

What it misses: Bees in June has a diverse cast of characters, including her invalid uncle Dixon, her cousin May Dean, and, of course the bees, but none of them appear on this page. Uncle Dixon personifies the wisdom of the natural world. “Treasure every bee you see, Rennie.” May Dean, described by Rennie’s husband as a “dim bulb,” is worried about the astronauts landing safely on a crescent moon. “Shouldn’t they go when it’s full, to give them a better chance?” Then there are the bees, who have their own chapters. Acting as a Greek chorus, they are wise and omniscient, but also not above interfering when they feel the humans have strayed from their path. The bees’ conversation about the humans begins the story.

The sooner he gets to Spark, the sooner his shattered heart will begin to knit back together.
What about her heart?
It grows colder every day. If he does not hurry, though, more than her heart is at risk. Her very life depends upon our success.
Is he going to save her?
No, something even better is afoot. She’s about to realize she must save herself.

Page 69 of Bees in June does a good job of communicating the overall feel of the book, but it lacks the engaging secondary characters that add to the flavor of the story.

Visit Elizabeth Bass Parman's website.

Q&A with Elizabeth Bass Parman.

The Page 69 Test: The Empress of Cooke County.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cold Island"

Peter Colt is a 1996 graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a BA in Political Science. Colt was a 24-year veteran of the Army Reserve with deployments to Kosovo and Iraq as an Army Civil Affairs officer. He is currently a police officer in Providence, Rhode Island. He is married to his long suffering wife with whom he is raising two sons.

He enjoys, kayaking and camping and tries to get on the local rivers and ponds as often as he reasonably can. Colt is also an avid cook, a hobby which manages to find its way into his novels. He is a proud member of both the Mystery Writers of America and The Pawtuxet Athletic Club.

He is the author of the Tommy Kelly mysteries, Cold Island (2025). He also wrote the Andy Roark series of books, The Off-Islander (2019) and Back Bay Blues (2020) and Death at Fort Devens (2022), The Ambassador (2023), The Judge (2024) and The Banker (2025). He has also published short stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Colt applied the Page 69 Test to Cold Island and shared the following:

Page 69 shows the protagonists of Cold Island, Massachusetts State Police Detective Tommy Kelly and Nantucket Police Department Detective Jo Harris at work. They are in the NPD detective bureau, checking emails, reporting to bosses and waiting for forensic evidence. In short they are doing real and boring police work. It aint like the stuff on TV. It's not glamorous but it is authentic.

If a reader were to open Cold Island to page 69 they wouldn't get a good idea about the story. In fact they might be tempted to put the book back on the shelf and move onto something more interesting. The book is a dark, twisty, cold case story. There is a lot in it to grab a reader's attention but there isn't much of it on page 69. That said, page 69 works in the context of the novel because it is one of the threads that make up the tapestry of the novel. In this case the Page 69 Test doesn't work for my book, but the Page 34 Test would!

Part of the reason why the test doesn't work for Cold Island is that the story is a police procedural, a cold case, that bounces back and forth from 1981 to 2016. The story itself involves a serial killer and the investigation that results from the recovery of one of his victims remains thirty-five years later. The downside of being a cop, writing a police procedural is the temptation, no, the need to portray the police work as just work. Nothing sexy. Just putting the pieces together. In that sense, page 69 is reflective of the novel but that mania for relative accuracy is just one part of the novel.

Visit Peter Colt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Back Bay Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Back Bay Blues.

Q&A with Peter Colt.

The Page 69 Test: Death at Fort Devens.

My Book, The Movie: Death at Fort Devens.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (June 2022).

My Book, The Movie: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Judge.

My Book, The Movie: The Judge.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (May 2024).

Writers Read: Peter Colt (March 2025).

My Book, The Movie: The Banker.

The Page 69 Test: The Banker.

--Marshal Zeringue

“What About the Bodies”

Ken Jaworowski is an editor at The New York Times. He graduated from Shippensburg University and the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was an amateur boxer, and has had plays produced in New York and Europe. He lives in New Jersey with his family.

Jaworowski applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, What About the Bodies, and reported the following:

I think I got lucky here: page 69 of What About the Bodies is fairly representative of the thriller's plot, in which good people venture into bad places. On that page, two characters are getting mired in a mess that will put them into debt with a brutal criminal. It’s a harsh moment, and, I hope, a bit of a funny one.

But behind the scene is a serious situation that many, many people are faced with: how to get money in an emergency. Several surveys have found that about half of all Americans wouldn’t be able to secure $1,000 if they needed it immediately. And that’s a reality that too many writers ignore. When I read a novel with a character who impulsively decides to jet across the country or dine in a trendy restaurant without worrying about the cost, I find myself a little put off. Sure, there are plenty of people who can afford expensive things. But there are far, far many more who can’t. And those are the people I like to write and read about.

Visit Ken Jaworowski's website.

Q&A with Ken Jaworowski.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Lonesome Place for Murder"

Nolan Chase lives and works in the Pacific Northwest.

A Lonesome Place for Murder is his second book featuring Ethan Brand. It follows A Lonesome Place for Dying, which earned starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

Chase applied the Page 69 Test to A Lonesome Place for Murder with the following results:

From page 69:

…the remains on the slightly tilted autopsy table, laid out on that stainless steel, affected him more than he’d though. Part of it was the decomposition, the mixture of wax and leather, bone and parchment. Partly it was thinking this was what remained of Tyler Rash. The kid who’d come to live with him for a time. The man who’d intervened and tried to help him.

Something else, too. Ethan had been down in that tunnel. He’d seen the dead man’s resting place, shared it for a brief while. Their lives had intersected over the years—in a way it was like viewing one possible outcome of his own life. If Ty hadn’t come to him that last time…

Ethan left the room.

At heart, A Lonesome Place for Murder is a story about family, loss, and crime. This excerpt from page 69 hits those themes solidly. Tyler Rash might be victim, intended victim, murderer, or something else entirely, but he and Ethan Brand are connected by blood and history. And they’re on a collision course…

Chief Ethan Brand stumbles on an abandoned smuggling tunnel, with a body lying inside. The dead man is somehow connected to Ethan’s childhood friend Tyler Rash. What was Tyler doing in the tunnel, and who wanted to killed him? Ethan and his senior investigator, Brenda Lee Page, have to find answers before the killer finds them.

Visit Nolan Chase's website.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase (May 2024).

The Page 69 Test: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

My Book, The Movie: A Lonesome Place for Dying.

My Book, The Movie: A Lonesome Place for Murder.

Writers Read: Nolan Chase.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sweetener"

Marissa Higgins is a lesbian writer. She is the author of the novel A Good Happy Girl.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Sweetener, and shared the following:

I feel like Sweetener exists so I can talk about page 69. It is perfect for my freaky little book. Sweetener comes in at 256 pages, a hair longer than my first freaky novel A Good Happy Girl. Page 69 of Sweetener opens with a split sentence, the tail end of a bigger picture: "and slower if she can help me call anyone, and I shake my head gingerly." Greasy Rebecca (narrator Rebecca) has just walked in front of (and been hit by) a moving car and Charlotte, my neurotic artist dating two Rebeccas concurrently, is trying to get Rebecca to go to the hospital to get checked out. But Charlotte and the Rebeccas are all disturbed, and Charlotte doesn't really want to go to the hospital; she wants to consume both Rebeccas alive. She settles for going into a bakery with possibly-concussed Rebecca instead.

"You're so confused," Charlotte tells Rebecca, who doesn't realize Charlotte's been the one she's meeting from the sugaring app. Why? Rebecca is thrown by Charlotte's big fake belly, which Charlotte holds while speaking

"I saw it happen from inside," Charlotte tells Rebecca. "I've been waiting..."

"For the arches of Heaven," I fill in. "Or the gates of hell?"

The whole book is a slice of these strange women's lives while they're "dyking out." The reader (and myself) are equally disoriented and consumed by what these dykes are willing to do "in plain sight" to get something they want, even if their desires are a mystery to themselves. In the running include having (or stealing) a baby, being a sugar mama, severing or saving a marriage, and fostering a real child. And explicit lesbian sex with a fake pregnancy belly.

"I've got to get going," Rebecca finally tells Charlotte, incorrectly thinking this can't be the woman she's been messaging; that pregnancy belly looks big. Sweetener is the story of women who don't recognize each other or themselves, but they're emotionally the same: three reduces to one, if not literally, thematically. Style is really important to me, and I think this page represents my writing the best; no quotation marks, weird images, language that's motivated by sound and rhythm. Built to annoy most readers and a little reward for people who let my music get into their head.

"I refuse to see a doctor or a nurse or anyone who has any expectation of being paid for their time," Rebecca, who is calling her broke self a sugar mama online, reasons. "I tell myself to look up what to do after you've been hit by. car when I get back to my room; someone else without insurance must have vlogged it."

If you don't like page 69, you probably won't like the rest of the book: my girls are insufferable, like me. But if you get to page 69, you probably are interested or neutral enough to finish reading. I personally think hate or disgust reads are great, and I don't think you have to enjoy a book to love it or be changed by it.

Visit Marissa Higgins's website and follow her on Instagram and Threads.

--Marshal Zeringue