writes the monthly Backlist column for CrimeReads. She lives in Lexington, VA.
Stewart applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Felons' Ball, and reported the following:
Page 69 of The Felons’ Ball includes an interview between the main character, Natalie Macready and the local sheriff, Hardy Underwood, after the murder of Natalie’s boyfriend, Ben Marsh. The sheriff is asking Natalie, who found Ben’s body, whether she knows what happened to the weapon that killed him, and then they move into a more general conversation about why Ben might have been stabbed rather than shot. A reader opening the book to this page would lack quite a bit in context, but they’d also get a great insight into some of the underlying tensions at work in this novel. Natalie wants to know who killed Ben, but she has a strong suspicion that her father might be responsible for his death, and she wants to keep the sheriff from looking in his direction. In this conversation and throughout the novel, she’s torn between helping law enforcement and actively trying to obstruct them.Visit Polly Stewart's website and follow her on Instagram.
I think this push-and-pull within the character and the dialogue illustrates something important about the novel as a whole. In his younger days, Natalie’s father, Trey Macready, made his living as a moonshiner, and though he’s now a legitimate businessman, Natalie wonders if Trey and his brother might have returned to making illegal liquor on the side. The whole family is caught between living within the law and outside it, and that’s what we see in this conversation between Natalie and Hardy. A man in Natalie’s situation might try to pay off the local cops, but Natalie and Hardy end up in a relationship instead. The reader will have to figure out not only who killed Ben, but what Natalie will do when faced with a choice between finding the truth and protecting her family.
The Page 69 Test: The Good Ones.
--Marshal Zeringue
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