"A Vine in the Blood"

Leighton Gage lives in a small town in Brazil where he writes police procedurals set in that country.

He applied the Page 69 Test to A Vine in the Blood, his new Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation, and reported the following:

Two different newspapers have used the same word to describe my work.

The word was “irresistible”.

The New York Times used it, last year, to describe Every Bitter Thing.

And last month, the Toronto Globe and Mail applied the same adjective to A Vine in the Blood.

The book also got a star from Publishers Weekly.

But it failed the page 69 test.

The words on the page aren’t representative of the book as a whole.

Nor would they inspire you, if you were skimming that page, to read on.

Oh, yeah, they advance the story, and I need them, but they’re not particularly clever, or funny or shocking, or…much of anything.

So that, for me, is a big, fat zero as far as the Page 69 Test is concerned.

The beginning, on the other hand…

Here are the very first words in the book:

“Less than an hour after Juraci Santos was unceremoniously dumped into the back seat of her kidnappers’ getaway car, Luca Vaz crept through her front gate and poisoned her bougainvilleas”.

Hmm.

Maybe I can get my publisher to start numbering from page 69 when they bring out the paperback.

Learn more about the book and author at Leighton Gage's website and the Murder is Everywhere blog.

The Page 69 Test: Every Bitter Thing.

Writers Read: Leighton Gage.

--Marshal Zeringue