Tuesday, August 28, 2012

"Lake Country"

Sean Doolittle's novels include The Cleanup, Rain Dogs, Burn (winner of the gold medal in the mystery category of ForeWord Magazine's 2003 Book of the Year Award), Dirt (an Amazon.com Top 100 Editor's Pick for 2001), and Safer. His short stories have been collected in Plots With Guns and The Year's Best Mystery Stories 2002.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Lake Country, and reported the following:
On page 69 of Lake Country, Minneapolis television news reporter Maya Lamb has just come out of a breaking-news report about a missing young woman, Juliet Benson, when she spots a familiar car parked at a curb near the spot where she's been shooting a live stand-up with her camera man, Deon:
She took one last long look at the beat-to-shit Skylark at the curb.

Then she turned and started running. Maya ran back up the sidewalk, back into Third Avenue, not waiting for traffic this time. Tires squealed. A horn blared. She hurried across, as fast as her heels would carry her, all the way to where Deon stood smoking a Parliament, watching her with interest.

"This morning," she said. "You shot roll outside Benson's house, right?"

Deon nodded. "You know I did. We cut it in the pack."

"The master. Is it in the truck or at the station?"

"Brought it with," Deon said. He tossed his unfinished cigarette in the gutter, where it died with a hiss. "Why?"
The answer to that question--which attentive readers will already know by this point--is that the beat-to-shit Skylark in question probably belongs to Juliet Benson's kidnapper. By page 70, things have only gotten more complicated.
Learn more about the author and his work at Sean Doolittle's website.

The Page 69 Test: Safer.

--Marshal Zeringue