and Minnesota. She held a variety of jobs that afforded her time to write, including bookseller and massage therapist. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. She currently lives in Colorado.Wohlsdorf applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Security, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Gina Wohlsdorf's website.Brian laughs, loudly. He bends with the strength of it. It looks cathartic.On any other night at Manderley Resort, this would be the most interesting thing going on in the hotel. Two friends, who are so much more than friends, separated by fate and deception and circumstance for far too long, reminisce about watching Saturday morning cartoons together as children and who liked what cereal.
The Killer has walked to the fourth dryer and opened the door. A hand flops out, limp, crimson, smoking. The Killer tucks it back in, closes the dryer door, but does not restart the machine.
“Corn Pops,” Brian says, wheezing.
“That was your poison, not mine. And Mitch and his Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”
“And you always took our toys! Those toys at the bottom of the —”
“You gave them to me!” Tessa is hopping up and down. “You gave them to me of your own free will, both of you!”
“It was extortion.” He points at her. “It was larceny.”
“You were willing victims.”
“God. God, yeah, we so were.”
While a hundred feet or so underneath them, The Killer does his macabre laundry.
This contrast is one of the primary engines of Security — love and horror, safety and danger, possibility and the ultimate negation of possibility: death. We flip from one to the other, back and forth, until the lines begin to blur.
But the biggest surprise in the book is still to come, and it actually doesn’t have any representation on page 69. There’s a reason we can see all — the rekindling romance, the violent murders, and even the most banal actions of Manderley’s other employees.
Just who, exactly, is telling the story...?
--Marshal Zeringue
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