"Not Who We Expected"

As a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, and blood as well as other forms of trace evidence. Now she is a Certified Crime Scene Analyst and Certified Latent Print Examiner and for the Cape Coral Police Department in Florida. Black is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the International Association for Identification, and the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. She has testified in court as an expert witness and served as a consultant for CourtTV.

She is the author of the Locard Institute series and of the highly acclaimed Gardiner & Renner series, for which she was nominated for the Sue Grafton Memorial Award. Her books have been translated into six languages.

Black applied the Page 69 Test to the fourth title in the Locard Institute series, Not Who We Expected, and reported the following:

This test doesn’t work well for this book. In Not Who We Expected, the Locard Forensic Institute is hired by rock legend Billy Diamond, who is himself in the throes of a vital comeback tour (as well as several illegal substances). Billy’s daughter Devon left college for the summer and never returned after a career development retreat in the Nevada desert turned into her new home. When the boyfriend who accompanied her turns up dead, Billy wants eyes on his daughter without appearing to hover. Former FBI agent and new Locard professor Ellie Carr is dispatched to said desert to find some answers—and she does. But they come with new and ominous questions.

On page 69, Ellie’s long day at the ranch is drawing to a close. But instead of turning in with her fellow attendees, she moves a few yards out into the night to make a surreptitious phone call to her boss, Dr. Rachael Davies. As she’s cursing the elusive cell service signal, a young man materializes out of the dark. He tells her phone service is a fruitless pursuit, but later Ellie will realize that her fear was not misplaced. The young man’s job is to make sure the attendees/recruits/victims at the ranch stay in line—by whatever means necessary.

But if a browsing reader checked out the book only by reading page 69, which hops from the busywork to frustration with technology to Ellie being startled—these things might seem too random without the rest of the book to show why all three short incidents are important to Ellie, to Devon, and to their survival.

Visit Lisa Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: That Darkness.

My Book, The Movie: Unpunished.

The Page 69 Test: Unpunished.

My Book, The Movie: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Perish.

The Page 69 Test: Suffer the Children.

Writers Read: Lisa Black (July 2020).

The Page 69 Test: Every Kind of Wicked.

Q&A with Lisa Black.

My Book, The Movie: What Harms You.

The Page 69 Test: What Harms You.

My Book, The Movie: The Deepest Kill.

My Book, The Movie: Not Who We Expected.

--Marshal Zeringue