"Hold Back the Dark"

Eileen Carr lives and writes in northern California. As Eileen Rendahl, she has written four chick-lit novels.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her debut romantic suspense novel Hold Back the Dark, and reported the following:

A middle of the night phone call from the Sacramento PD delivers a shock to clinical psychologist Aimee Gannon: her seventeen-year-old patient could be a suspect in a gruesome murder. Detective Josh Wolf needs Aimee’s help to decipher the clues behind a pattern of rectangles and circles drawn in blood at the crime scene.

Page 69 of Hold Back the Dark has the tail end of a scene from the point of view of the book’s heroine, Aimee Gannon, and the beginning of a scene from the point of view of the book’s hero, Josh Wolf.

Aimee’s scene ends with her saying good-bye to her client’s aunt and leaving the police station and, she thinks, walking away from the situation.

“Aimee walked past the glassed-in booth where the sergeant sat and out to the parking lot, feeling like she was leaving an awful lot of unfinished business behind.”

I think the scene sums up Aimee’s feelings about what’s happened so far in the book. She’s done what she can to help, but the system is going to shut her out and keep her from doing anything more. She walks out of the police station feeling uneasy.

Josh’s scene begins as he interrogates what could be the last person who saw the Aimee’s client before she became catatonic. He is frustrated in more ways than one.

“Josh rubbed his hand over his face, took a deep breath and counted to ten. Again. Another teenaged girl that he’d like to shake until her teeth rattled. Did this one have a hot shrink who could distract him, too? That would make it all into just the most perfect clusterfuck ever.”

Again, this certainly sums up Josh’s mindset at this point in the book.

If I picked up the book and read this page, I’d want to read more. I’d want to know about Aimee’s unfinished business and what Josh was going to learn about what happened the night of the murder. Since it even gives a hint at the romantic entanglements to come, I’d want to learn how that progresses as well.

Read an excerpt from Hold Back the Dark, and learn more about the book and author at Eileen Carr's website.

Watch the Hold Back the Dark video trailer.

--Marshal Zeringue