Mary Daheim's many books include twenty novels in her Emma Lord series and twenty-four titles in her Bed-and-Breakfast series.
She applied
the Page 69 Test to the latest Bed-and-Breakfast mystery,
Vi Agra Falls, and reported the following:
Amazingly, P. 69 of Vi Agra Falls is the first page of a new chapter and focuses on Judith Flynn's nemesis, Vivian who was once married to Joe Flynn, Judith's husband. Vivian--or Herself as she's (very) commonly known--has discovered a body hanging from a tree in her back yard. The narrative concerns not only a whodunit, but a whoisit because Vivian--and almost everyone else in the neighborhood--doesn't recognize the victim. P. 69 also alludes to Judith's propensity for finding dead bodies both at home and abroad. The interaction between Joe and the two women he married gives the reader a sense of the tension between this triangle. What isn't mentioned, however, is that only hours before the murder, Vivian has informed the rest of the neighbors in the quiet cul-de-sac that she intends to build a high-rise condo. Maybe I cheated a bit, but I asked a long-time fan of the B&B series to take a look at P. 69 and this is her response: "What could be more intriguing than stunned disbelief, confusion, a dead body, your spouse's unconscious ex-wife and a skeptical 911 operator all on one page?"
Browse inside Vi Agra Falls, and learn more about the book and author at
Mary Daheim's website. Daheim has been an Agatha Award nominee, winner of the 2000 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Achievement Award, and her mysteries regularly make the
USA Today bestseller list and the
New York Times top thirty.
Visit
the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.
--Marshal Zeringue
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