"Knife Skills For Beginners"

Orlando Murrin is the debut author of Knife Skills For Beginners, a murder mystery set in a posh London cookery school. Having started out as a magazine sub-editor, he won through to the semi-final of the BBC Masterchef programme and found himself hurled into the world of food writing. He was editor of the UK’s bestselling food magazine, BBC Good Food, for six years before taking off to rural France to create a gastronomic guesthouse. He has written six cookbooks, including A Table in the Tarn (Stewart, Tabori and Chang), which describes his French adventure, and Two’s Company (Ryland Peters & Small), devoted to the art of cooking for couples, friends and room-mates.

Murrin applied the Page 69 Test to Knife Skills For Beginners and reported the following:

Knife Skills For Beginners is set in a posh London cookery school, where chef Paul Delamare has been persuaded to teach a course at short notice. He is a charming but sad character, coming to terms with the recent death of his partner. It is on page 69 that Paul takes the reader into his confidence, describing his fall from grace ten years earlier, and subsequent meeting with Marcus.

It is the only moment in the book when Paul looks back, and a reader stumbling across it would assume the book is decidedly dark – which it isn’t. During the flashback, we learn of his downward spiral into drugs and depression after his mother’s suicide, and his rescue by best friend Julie (who breaks in through a window). It makes me tingle even now to imagine the pair weeping in each others’ arms, but it’s not characteristic of the book, which is essentially a social comedy.

This scene does however mark a dramatic change in Paul’s fortunes, because lower down the page he takes Julie’s advice to start with something ‘doable’ and goes for a haircut.

‘As fate would have it, sitting at the next chair was a businessman. He was deep in conversation with his stylist, not about hair length or conditioning products, but about frying pans.’ Paul leans back and angles his head to get a better look: ‘after all, that’s what mirrors in hairdressing salons are for.’ The debonair businessman is destined to be the love of his life.

The book has been described by readers as both funny and scary: humour is Paul’s defence mechanism, and if you ask me, murder really is terrifying. The review I most treasure, however, describes it as ‘unexpectedly moving’. Page 69 certainly moves me, so I'm glad the test landed there, even if it doesn't sum up the book as a whole.

Visit Orlando Murrin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Floreana"

Midge Raymond is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent, the short-story collection Forgetting English, and, with coauthor John Yunker, the mystery novel Devils Island. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. Raymond has taught at Boston University, Boston’s Grub Street Writers, Seattle’s Hugo House, and San Diego Writers, Ink. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she is co-founder of the boutique publisher Ashland Creek Press.

Raymond applied the Page 69 Test to Floreana and reported the following:

On page 69, Mallory, a scientist who has just returned to fieldwork after a decade away, is getting ready for an evening with unexpected visitors to Floreana Island after she has spent a long day in the equatorial heat building penguin nests. Here are the first two paragraphs on the page:

I take a cool shower and put on a loose white blouse and a long cotton skirt that will give my arms and legs a reprieve from the bug spray, though I still have to spray the backs of my hands, my wrists, my feet and ankles. I soak my palm and pat the repellent onto my cheeks, forehead, and neck.

I tie my wet hair back and, in the tiny bathroom mirror, take in my florid face, drooping eyes. I’ve avoided mirrors for months, though I have to admit that donning a skirt has as much to do with being seen next to Callie as avoiding bug spray. It feels indulgent to care what I look like—almost like a betrayal, if I let myself think of Scott and Emily—but I’m relieved to see the mirror’s reflection is not quite as bad as I thought. In the equatorial light, flecks of gold emerge from the brown of my eyes, and, thanks to the sun, my normally brown hair is sprayed with highlights.

This page doesn’t capture the novel as a whole because Floreana has two narratives—the re-imagined story of Dore Strauch, inspired by a real woman who settled on the island in the 1930s and got caught up in the mysterious disappearance of other settlers, and the contemporary story of Mallory, a penguin researcher who has returned to the field after leaving science behind to start a family.

This scene does capture a few key aspects of Mallory’s story: the complicated feelings about her husband, daughter, and what she left behind as well as what she risks by returning to the island; and her awareness of her age and the time that has slipped away since she last worked in penguin conservation. But Floreana isn’t complete without the narrative of Dore Strauch, a character inspired by a real woman who lived on Floreana and was part of a scandal in the 1930s. Only by reading both narratives can readers see how the two women struggle, despite being a century apart, with their identities and with love and family and what it means to them—and especially how they each dreamed of escape on Floreana, only to find the island was, in fact, the very place that forced them to confront their deepest, darkest desires and fears.

Learn more about the author and her work at Midge Raymond's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Last Continent.

Writers Read: Midge Raymond (June 2016).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Champagne Letters"

Kate MacIntosh is always in search of the perfect bottle of wine, a great book, and a swoon worthy period costume drama. You’ll find her in Vancouver making friends with every dog she meets, teaching writing, and listening to true crime podcasts while lounging on the sofa in sweats and spouting random historical facts she finds interesting.

MacIntosh applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Champagne Letters, and reported the following:

How was I to compete with the sugary fiction the wench was dishing out?

My first reaction to the Page 69 Test was that the scene would give a reader a sense of character and tone to the book. While the character has had a minor setback, you can sense that she isn’t going to simply roll over and accept it.

The scene on page 69 takes place in the early 1800s with Barbe-Nicole Clicquot talking with her young daughter Clementine. Clementine is falling under the spell of a housemaid that Barbe-Nicole knows is up to no good. The Widow realizes that stories from others, especially those spun to be alluring, can be a trap. Then I realized the line above touches on a major theme in the book and as a result the scene passes the test more than I initially thought.

I’m fascinated by the power of narrative. It’s often not what happens to us, but the meaning we put on those events. We need to recognize the stories we tell ourselves and the power of those tales to shape our lives. The protagonist in the present-day story line, Natalie, is reeling from her divorce. Her husband of twenty-five years has left her for another (younger) woman and left her feeling abandoned and without direction. Her whole life she put him first and now she doesn’t even know what she wants. Reading the letters of the Widow Clicquot, she learns to tell herself a different story. That perhaps the story is that her husband leaving is a reflection on him, not her. And she can create an even better life for herself, even if she doesn’t fully know what she wants that to look like. Natalie’s discovering that she doesn’t need to believe other people’s stories, or wait to be rescued, and she’s in control of her own destiny.

Visit Kate MacIntosh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Buried Road"

Katie Tallo has been an award-winning screenwriter and director for more than three decades. After winning an international contest for unpublished fiction, she began writing novels, including Dark August and Poison Lilies. She has a daughter and lives with her husband in Ottawa, Ontario.

Tallo applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Buried Road, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Buried Road, Gus and her young daughter run from a lighthouse where they had taken refuge for the night. Smoke billows everywhere but they soon see that it’s not the lighthouse that’s on fire. It’s their car, and along with it, the clues they’ve uncovered so far are burning. Gus is devastated and blames herself while her daughter, Bly, tries to comfort her. Gus says “Bad sticks to me.” The moment drops us right into the precariousness of the situation the two find themselves in as they search for a missing loved one. Clearly, someone wants them to stop looking. Gus’s past is also never far from her mind. “I was there when my mother was murdered,” she says at the bottom of page 69, as if to say she is the common factor in all bad things that happen. As her daughter tries to reassure her, their complicated, mother-daughter, dynamic is evident.

Yes, The Page 69 Test would give reader’s a very good glimpse at both the relationships in the novel and the dangers yet to come for the two protagonists as they travel along a Buried Road.

Visit Katie Tallo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dark August.

Q&A with Katie Tallo.

Writers Read: Katie Tallo (June 2022).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Echo"

Tracy Clark is the author of Echo, the third novel in the Detective Harriet Foster police procedural series. She is also author of the Cass Raines PI series, a two-time Sue Grafton Memorial Award- winning author, the 2024 Anthony Award- winner for Best Paperback Original, the 2024 Lefty Award-winner for Best Mystery and the 2022 winner of the Sara Paretsky Award. She is a board member-at-large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland and a member of International Thriller Writers, and serves on the boards of Mystery Writers of America Chicago and the Midwest Mystery Conference.

Clark applied the Page 69 Test to Echo and reported the following:

Darn it! My books always seem to fail the Page 69 Test. Readers turning to page 69 in my latest Det. Harriet Foster novel, Echo, won’t get much story, but they will, thank goodness, get a great deal of character. In fact, page 69 finds my complicated, inwardly directed cop, Harri, finally making an effort to connect with her new partner, Det. Vera Li.

Like a snail in a shell, Harri has been figuratively trudging through the morass of grief, loss and guilt, also deep pain and the feeling of lost opportunity to have made things different. She’s lost a partner, a young son, a marriage, and the life she had before, and hasn’t yet found a way to right the ship.

And in comes Det. Vera Li, who sees her, grabs ahold, and is determined to help her out of the hole she’s in. Li is quite a different character. Married, with a two-year-old son and her mother living in the home, Vera is open, smart, intuitive, ambitious, and sees the world half full. She hasn’t experienced loss on the level that Harri has experienced it.

While Harri keeps the world, and everyone in it, three arm lengths from her, Vera doesn’t appear to need the distance. Slowly, the two begin to mesh and come to not only like each other, but respect and depend on one another.

Page 69 reveals another inch forward for Harri, and a quiet victory for Vera. In this short exchange of dialogue, we get a sense of the two together, the shorthand and trust that’s forming. I don’t think the two will get to the braiding each other’s hair stage—or maybe they will; I’ll have to see—but there’s less push from Harri now, a little crack in her armor here, even a little glimpse into the woman she used to be before her world fell apart.

From page 69:

A white bag dropped onto her desk. Harri jumped. “Jesus.”

Detective Vera Li stood there in a beanie and a damp navy peacoat. Ready for the day, her dark, keen eyes having no doubt scanned the room and everybody in it. “Crullers from Mason’s,” she announced.

Vera dropped her battered backpack on her desk, then plopped down in her squeaky chair, plopping a similar bag in front of her. “The line was halfway out the door, but they’re worth it.”

“What’s the occasion? It’s not my birthday.”

Harri eyed the bag in front of her, then the one in front of Vera, grease splotching the sides of both. “Or yours.”

Vera’s brows furrowed, skeptical. “You know my birthday?”

“March second. You want the year?”

Vera lifted her pack, opened the bottom drawer, shoved it in. “Should I be afraid?”

Harri shrugged, offered a small smile. “I can’t tell you what to be.”

Harri’s got a ways to go, but page 69 is a good start.

Visit Tracy Clark's website.

Q&A with Tracy Clark.

My Book, The Movie: What You Don’t See.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (July 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Hide.

The Page 69 Test: Fall.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (December 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Scotzilla"

Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the Dandy Gilver historical detective stories, the Last Ditch mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist The Day She Died and Mary Higgins Clark finalist Strangers at the Gate. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters’ Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.

McPherson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Scotzilla, and reported the following:

From page 69:

paediatric HDU was permanently exhausted and could fall asleep on the lip of a volcano.

‘I’ll join you, Roger,’ Noleen said. ‘In my own room, I mean.’ Noleen wasn’t a huge napper but she was an enthusiastic lunchtime drinker and siestas were standard. v ‘Of course, we understand if you don’t want to come, Lexy,’ Todd said. ‘After the dragon slasher.’

I nodded, then I thought some more. People were in and out of that cemetery all day every day: gardeners, mourners, dog walkers, our little band of enthusiastic weirdos. ‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘Lightning never strikes and all that.’

‘What is it this time anyway?’ I said, as we made our way through the streets to the familiar gates.

‘Skeleton,’ said Todd.

I sat up a bit straighter in the back seat.

‘How is that left for a PI to deal with?’ I said. ‘Do the cops know? Have they called forensics?’

‘Wait and see,’ said Kathi. ‘Oh no! Todd, park outside and let’s walk in.’

I looked where she was facing and saw that there was a funeral taking place in the cemetery today, a cluster of dark-clothed adults and children all processing behind a sort of cart with a coffin on top, pulled by two men in the national dress of some country I didn’t recgonise. They looked far too festive for the occasion.

‘Do we know where we’re supposed to be going this time?’ I said. ‘What if the coordinates take us to right beside the burial?’

‘Linda said hug the wall and walk clockwise round a quarter of the perimeter,’ Kathi told me. ‘That bunch’ – she braced both hands on my shoulders and boosted herself up to see – ‘are stopping in the middle.’

The cemetery was big enough that the mourners didn’t notice us as we picked our way through the outer ring of gravestones, clambering occasionally, tripping more than once when we encountered those flat slabs that are supposed to make the sexton’s life so easy. Before too long, we arrived the site of the latest incident.

‘Is it real?’ I said, peering at the skeleton.

‘You should know,’ said Kathi. ‘You’re the last one of us to have seen a skeleton.’ I shuddered at the memory then scrutinised what lay on the tufty grass of the grave in front of us.

We did so well with this last time, but Scotzilla gets a C- on the Page 69 Test. Well, a browser would find out that there's a crime, cops, forensics, and a PI. They would also discover that a cemetery features in the story and that the pge 69 skeleton is not the start of the mayhem, since “skeleton” is the answer to the question “What is it this time?” and is described as “the latest incident”.

I do think that “Of course we understand if you don’t want to come, Lexy. After the dragon slasher” is a speech that would make me want to find out more if I came across it. Dragon slasher? Perhaps, too, the chance to meet a “band of enthusiastic weirdoes” is going to be enticing to exactly the reader who might enjoy the novel.

It’s surprising that there’s no mention of the wedding that’s the background setting to the story. And it’s a bit surprising that the language is so clean and PG. I am sorry that the running joke about a group called the Sex Volunteers didn’t pop up on this page, although one of its parents did. Ach, but now I’m being mysterious for mystery’s sake.

Despite page 69 having a funeral on it, Scotzilla is a caper about a wedding and some pranks and a murder and California and love and family (blood and found) and I do hope you'll give it a go.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Trouble Island"

Sharon Short is the author of sixteen published books. Her newest, Trouble Island, is historical suspense set in the 1930s on a Lake Erie island. Short is a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, for which she writes the column, “Level Up Your Writing (Life)” and teaches for Writer’s Digest University. She is a frequent, in-demand speaker at libraries, book clubs, and writing groups.

Short applied the Page 69 Test to Trouble Island and reported the following:

Trouble Island is set on a Lake Erie private island owned by a Prohibition gangster’s estranged wife, and narrated by an alleged murderess—forced into hiding as the wife’s servant—who plots her escape just as the gangster and a rogue ice storm make unexpected landfall.

Page 69 of Trouble Island reads as follows:

…the way she sang it made me realize I’d only been running away, not toward something. So I just finished lamely, “—it reminded me of home.”

To my surprise, Rosita asked with genuine curiosity, “Where’s that?”

“Southeast Ohio. Nowhere important.” The way she’d sung it, I couldn’t help but wonder what the song meant to her. So the question burst out of me: “Is that what you were thinking of? Home? You seemed somewhere else when you sang. I think that’s why it took me back—”

“That’s nonsense, doll,” Pony said. “But ma’am, it’s good to meet you, and uh, before you women folk get to gabbing, I’d love an introduction to your husband—I did some, ah, work for one of his men, over on Third—”

That took me by surprise. He hadn’t told me this. But then, he’d been coming home late, sometimes after midnight. And he had given me a more generous grocery allowance, and told me to get better cuts of meat for supper. I’d only asked him about it once. He’d backhanded me, and when my nose bled, told me that’s what I got for being nosy, and then cackled like he’d just made the cleverest joke.

Pony went on, “We came here tonight ’cause I was hoping to meet him, but, ah, it’s hard to get—” He stopped, stared longingly over at Eddie’s table, then jumped a little, straightening his shoulders like he was already a good soldier, for Eddie was making his way over to us.

I almost laughed at Pony. Couldn’t he see that Eddie didn’t notice him, or me? That Eddie’s smoldering gaze, the hint of a tender smile on his otherwise cruel slash of a mouth, was only for Rosita?

This page from Trouble Island captures the driving force of the plot: Aurelia (the narrator) is on the lam on a Lake Erie island owned by the estranged wife (Rosita) of a major gangster (Eddie). However, the scene on page 69 takes place before Aurelia must go on the lam, and before Rosita and Eddie’s marriage falls apart. Aurelia and Rosita are meeting for the first time, as Aurelia and her then-husband Pony go to a speakeasy where Rosita is performing. Their friendship ends up rocking both of their worlds.

I love that this page also captures Aurelia’s past insecurity and troubled life, which serves as a marked contrast with her current life on Trouble Island—the bulk of the novel—and her striving to break free from her past haunts and get a fresh start.

Learn more about the book and author at Sharon Short's website.

The Page 69 Test: My One Square Inch of Alaska.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Curdle Creek"

Yvonne Battle-Felton was born in Pennsylvania and raised in New Jersey before moving to Maryland. She currently lives in Yorkshire, England with her family. Battle-Felton holds an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. She is an associate teaching professor and the academic director of creative writing at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her debut novel, Remembered, won a Northern Writers’ Award, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

Battle-Felton applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Curdle Creek, and reported the following:

Let’s turn to page 69 to see what the test reveals. For this test, I’m using the US edition. Here we go:

…can almost hear the hooting and hollering, the chants from the townsfolk with their pre-Warding off shenanigans. Besides, in a year, Mr. Jacobs won’t even be here. Not if my nominating him has anything to do with it.

I picture Daddy running through the sheets, hot torches sizzling and popping, shadows taunting and practically taking shape as the town closes in. “Will you be scared when it’s your time?”

Daddy straightens up. Takes a step back. I didn’t mean to offend him. I drop to my knees to apologize.

“No, no,” he says. He grabs my arm tight, yanks me to my feet, still shaking his head. “You didn’t do anything wrong in asking.” The Town Hall bell rings. “You remember when you were a little girl, and we’d talk about Well Walkers down by the Creek?”

I would hate for him to move On thinking he’d raised a non-believer. “Of course I do, but they ain’t real and if they were, what they’d be doing would be wrong. When it’s my time, I’ll go like I’m called to.”

A breeze blows, carrying the smell of fresh cow dung, exhaust, and sweet-cut grass. Flies fat with all the time in the world buzz and settle one after the other near Daddy’s feet. He pats me on the back like I’m one of the girls.

“I thought you might say that. But if you change your mind, if you ever need to, see if you don’t find what you need when you need it. Don’t tell your mother. She has enough to think about right now.”

She sure does. Why else would she be sewing mourning clothes before the Calling?

If readers open Curdle Creek to page 69 they’ll get a good idea of what the book is about and some of the tensions. They’ll meet Osiria, the main character, and Osirus her father, before his name is called. They’ll see that she’s a believer of the town’s many rules and I think they get a good sense that something sinister is going on in the town of Curdle Creek. They’ll see that Osira is a willing participant in it and for me that makes it even more sinister. They might get to see some of Osirus’ doubts creeping in.

Curdle Creek is inspired by Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery." I wanted to know what a town with sinister rules might look like in a contemporary setting. The town of Curdle Creek has a strict population policy of one in, one out. It’s the law and everyone follows the law. The town has a way of coming in between people and families. Allegiances are to the rituals. In a town like this, the more people know about you the more dangerous it is. So family is the first to turn on you. I was really interested in who might follow the rules and who would break them. There’s always a rule breaker. But even in a town full of people with their own motives there is love and joy and music. There are also grudges and secrets. On page 69 Osirus has a secret. Osira doesn’t know what it is and wouldn’t believe it if she knew. All she knows is that following the rules keeps her and her loved ones safe. She believes this even after her children run off, after her husband’s name is called, after she loses the job she loves. If nothing else, Osira is a believer. At least she is on page 69.

Visit Yvonne Battle-Felton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sick To Death"

Andrew Welsh-Huggins is the Shamus, Derringer, and International Thriller Writers-award-nominated author of the Andy Hayes Private Eye series, featuring a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned investigator, and editor of Columbus Noir. His stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, the 2022 anthology Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon, and other magazines and anthologies.

Welsh-Huggins applied the Page 69 Test to his newest novel, Sick to Death, the eighth Andy Hayes mystery, and reported the following:

This time around, the Page 69 Test perfectly encapsulated Sick To Death’s themes and plot.

Three things happen on this page. First, my protagonist, private eye Andy Hayes, receives a text from Patience, a fellow guard at the Columbus Museum of Art which recently fired Hayes. Patience is offering to deliver items left in his locker after his dismissal. Second, Hayes exchanges text messages with his older son, Mike, informing Mike he can’t bring his girlfriend to a family dinner the following night. Third, Hayes awakens from a dream where he hears a voice say, “I’m not really into sports,” and struggles in vain to recall the speaker.

The text from Patience is a part of the book’s subplot. In the opening chapter, Hayes helps stop the theft of a valuable painting, The Boulevard, by Ashcan school artist George Bellows. By chasing the thief and possibly endangering the painting, Hayes violates museum protocols and is promptly fired. Soon, to his dismay, he finds himself named a person of interest in the theft plot and faces questioning from the FBI. Figuring out the real culprits becomes paramount.

The text exchange with Mike goes directly to the book’s main plot. Helping Hayes rescue the painting was a young woman whom Hayes had seen around the gallery. Afterward, she drops a bombshell: she—Alex Rutledge—is Hayes’ daughter from a one-night stand 25 years ago with a woman named Kate Rutledge. Alex isn’t interested in a warm and fuzzy reunion, however. She wants Hayes to find out who killed her mother, an ICU nurse, in a fatal hit-skip accident almost six months earlier. As Hayes wrestles with this development, he makes plans to introduce Kate to his two boys, Mike and Joe, at a pizza place.

The voice Hayes recalls from a dream fits into Hayes’ ongoing journey of redemption. To his great shame, he can’t remember Kate at first, lamenting that at that time in his life, “There had been a lot of bars and a lot of women.” Eventually, he recalls the night they met when he went to Damon’s rib joint with two buddies and she was their server. As Hayes investigates Kate’s death and learns more about her personality and devotion to her work as a nurse during COVID, he regrets once again his wayward past even as he struggles to build a relationship with his new daughter.

Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.

My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.

Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (April 2023).

My Book, The Movie: The End of the Road.

The Page 69 Test: The End of the Road.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

My Book, The Movie: Sick to Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Days Between"

Robin Morris has had a lifelong obsession with books and cats. She works in finance and is a certified book editor, a literary agent assistant, and an author of fiction and nonfiction.

Morris applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Days Between, and reported the following:

Page 69 consists of a conversation between Emmy (17) and Max (19) on the first occasion that they spend time together. My book fails the Page 69 Test! It will give the reader a good idea of one of the storylines, the budding romance between Max and Emmy, but covers none of the overall storyline, the secrets between Max's parents and the lives those secrets will unravel.

Visit Robin Morris's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Rolling Toward Clear Skies"

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of more than forty published and forthcoming books.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Rolling Toward Clear Skies, and reported the following:

Page 69 text:

“I hope this is okay,” Maggie said, feeling unsure for the first time.

“You hope what is okay?”

“Having them in the RV. It’s a bit less… conventional than a hospital room.”

“Under normal circumstances,” the social worker said, “sure. It would be odd. But after a hurricane like that one, nothing is normal. The hospital has no beds, and minors are unattended in those huge makeshift shelters. Normally I wouldn’t take a day off work and drive two children to Mobile. I’d just call the grandparents and ask them to come claim the girls. But they don’t drive anymore, and somebody has to get the girls somewhere. We’re all doing the best we can, right?”

“That’s a good way to look at it.”

“Have you told them they get to take their dog?”

“I haven’t seen them since then, no. If those are the first words out of your mouth I’m sure they’ll be your biggest fans.”

She opened the door to the RV. The girls were sitting at the table, their heads close. Talking about something, from the look of it. The blinked at the new visitor, but it was hard for Maggie to match an emotion with their faces. They looked calm, almost accepting. But Maggie could feel their resistance and fear.

The puppy crawled around in a circle under the table, pressing his face into a corner. Maggie thought if he could will himself right through the side of the RV, he would.

“Hi girls,” the social worker said. “I’m Evie Moskowitz from Child and Family Services.”

The girls only sat in a slightly stunned silence.

“I have some good news,” Evie continued. “Your grandparents are going to let you bring your dog.”

“Oh that’s great!” Rose said.

Since Rose hadn’t spoken to Maggie until they’d known each other for a day or more, Maggie knew it meant a lot. Either they were coming up through the worst, most paralyzing phase of their trauma, or the dog just meant that much. More likely a combination of the two factors.

“Oh my, he’s so thin,” Evie said.

I have mixed feelings about how this page 69 holds up. As is often the case, it catches the characters in a fairly ordinary moment. There’s a lot of drama leading up to this page, and following this page, but I’m not sure how much of it the reader gathers just from this text.

It’s all a bit more loaded when you know that the dog isn’t even theirs. He was also orphaned in the hurricane, and they’re trying to fool social services and the grandparents into letting the girls bring him. It’s more loaded still if you know that they’ll bounce away from the grandparents’ house before our protagonists can even drive home. But it’s the Page 69 Test, so you don’t know that. I do hope it creates a few mysteries, though—a few holes in what you know that might make you want to read on and learn more. I know curiosity is a big factor for me as far as determining whether I put a book down or keep going.

I’d say page 69 in this case is a bit less that moderately successful at representing the novel as a whole.

Visit Catherine Ryan Hyde's website.

Q&A with Catherine Ryan Hyde.

The Page 69 Test: Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.

The Page 69 Test: My Name is Anton.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Perfect Things.

The Page 69 Test: Boy Underground.

The Page 69 Test: Dreaming of Flight.

The Page 69 Test: So Long, Chester Wheeler.

The Page 69 Test: A Different Kind of Gone.

The Page 69 Test: Life, Loss, and Puffins.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Burn this Night"

Alex Kenna is a prosecutor, writer, and amateur painter. Before law school, Kenna studied painting and art history at Penn. She also worked as a freelance art critic and culture writer. Originally from Washington DC, Kenna lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and giant schnauzer, Zelda. When she’s not writing Kenna can be found nerding out in art museums, exploring flea markets, and playing string instruments badly. Her debut novel, What Meets the Eye, was nominated for a Shamus Award for best first PI novel.

Kenna applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Burn this Night, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Twenty months ago—Abby

The first time I read the play Gruesome Playground Injuries, it made me cry. It told the story of Doug and Kayleen, two platonically in love friends, from childhood through their late thirties. I jumped at the chance to play Kayleen, whose shitty parents set her on a lifelong path of self-destruction. Meanwhile, Doug, her reckless, daredevil friend adores her from a distance, periodically maiming himself in a series of increasingly stupid and preventable accidents.

The story moves around in time, tracing their lives through different injuries – both mental and physical. In one scene they’re eight, chatting in the school nurse’s office, him with a head scrape, and her with a tummy ache. Flash forward ten years, and Doug’s just been beat up for defending Kayleen’s honor. Meanwhile, she’s curled up in bed, in deep denial about a non- consensual sexual encounter.

What moved me about the story was how much it made me think of my relationship with Jacob—minus the romantic connection. Doug and Kayleen talk to each other like kids, never losing the immature kid speech they had when they met. I loved how that immaturity was paired with this intense adult bond they shared. Even though they’re both too broken to help each other. It made me think of my brother—how I act like a teen around him. How I feel in my gut that something is really wrong and he’s starting to spiral in a way that I’m powerless to stop.

While I was intrigued by the Page 69 Test, the challenge isn’t a perfect fit for a book written from multiple perspectives and across different timelines. My novel, Burn this Night, explores an arson murder and a cold case killing that both occurred in a small mountain town. Most of the book is told from the perspective of a private detective investigating the crimes. But page 69 starts a flashback chapter told from the perspective of Abby Coburn, a woman who died in the fire.

Abby is an intense, reflective person with a passion for art and family. This snippet is a window into her character. Abby is a struggling actress who gives up her original career to study social work. She makes this seismic life change after her brother, Jacob, becomes addicted to methamphetamine and starts to lose his mind. Here, Abby has just finished performing in Gruesome Playground Injuries, a fascinating play by Rajiv Joseph. The play follows two platonic friends over time, who love each other, but who are too immature and psychologically damaged to fully connect. On page 69, Abby reflects on how much the play echoes her love for her brother and her inability to reach him or slow his downward spiral.

Visit Alex Kenna's website.

Q&A with Alex Kenna.

My Book, The Movie: What Meets the Eye.

Writers Read: Alex Kenna.

--Marshal Zeringue