"The Helios Conspiracy"

Jim DeFelice’s new book, The Helios Conspiracy (Tor/Forge), received a starred review from Kirkus, who called it “complete success with its appealing investigator, rapid-fire dialogue and convincing storytelling.”

He is the co-author of American Sniper, the New York Times number one best-seller.

DeFelice applied the Page 69 Test to The Helios Conspiracy and reported the following:

If you opened to page 69 in The Helios Conspiracy, you’d get a little information about the murders that drive the main character of the book, Andy Fisher. It’s there that he learns that there’s been a second suspicious death, a discovery which starts him on the road to uncovering (duh) a conspiracy to sabotage a planned satellite solar energy system.

But more to the point, you’d learn something critical about “Fish” – who hates to be called that, by the way.

Andy is in California, and unfamiliar with the local terrain, asks his informant where they can meet to talk. Someplace with food and coffee, he adds.

It’s very late, far past the time when Starbucks and its ilk have shut down the espresso makers. So the informant is hard-pressed to make a suggestion.

“The only place I can think of is the Throwback Diner,” she tells him finally. But then she warns, “The coffee’s not good – it’s always burnt and acidic.”

“Sounds like the gods’ nectar to me,” he answers. And for once in the book, he’s not kidding. Fisher is a connoisseur of bad coffee – the more putrid the better.

I don’t know if that would sell The Helios Conspiracy, but it does sum up Andy, and one of the subthemes of the novel – the world needs more places where you can get a cheap cup of coffee and an over-generous piece of banana cream pie.

Learn more about the book and author at Jim DeFelice's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Leopards Kill.

Writers Read: Jim DeFelice.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dying in the Wool"

Frances Brody lives in the North of England, where she was born and grew up. Brody started her writing life in radio, with many plays and short stories broadcast by the BBC. She has also written for television and theatre. Before turning to crime, she wrote sagas, winning the HarperCollins Elizabeth Elgin award for most regionally evocative debut saga of the millennium.

Brody applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Dying in the Wool, and reported the following:

The search to discover what happened to her husband Gerald, missing in action in 1918, draws Kate Shackleton into sleuthing. In 1922, she takes on her first professional case. Tabitha Braithwaite seeks Kate’s help. Tabitha hopes and dreams that her millionaire mill owner father, who vanished in 1916, will be found within the next six weeks, in time to walk Tabitha down the aisle when she marries.

Page 69 sees Kate in the village of Bridgestead, talking to the village bobby, who shows Kate newspaper cuttings of the old case. The cuttings suggest that Joshua Braithwaite attempted suicide. This was, of course, a crime. Constable Mitchell waits until Kate has finished reading an account of Braithwaite being pulled from the beck (stream), and then he says:

‘It was one of the worst days of my life, having to arrest Joshua Braithwaite for attempted suicide. And the man was in no fit state.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘I’ll do better than that. I can give you my report from the time.’ He opened a desk drawer and lifted out several notebooks, looking at the covers for dates. ‘It didn’t help that he was found in a spot where a suicide had happened three years earlier.’

The image made me shudder. ‘How awful. By the waterfall?’ This was what Mrs Kellett had said, although Tabitha had pointed out the shallow area near the stepping stones.

‘Yes, by the waterfall. If Braithwaite hadn’t been pulled out when he was, he would have drowned, like the weaver and her children.’

Kate spots discrepancies between the different accounts of what happened that fateful day. Has the fact that a previous soul in despair ended her days at this spot coloured interpretations placed on Braithwaite’s actions? Tabitha had insisted her father would not have attempted suicide. Kate pushes the constable a little.

‘I can imagine a woman might seek to end her life in that way, if she is truly despairing. Perhaps it’s my prejudice, but it seems to me a more female method of dying. Would Mr Braithwaite have chosen that way out?’

‘Men are just as likely to drown themselves. Mills are all built by the water. Canals and becks have made a last resting place for many a poor labourer.’

He found the page in his notebook. ‘My writing’s not very legible. I’ll read it to you.’

Kate will have a great deal of unravelling to do before she finds out what really happened, and whether she will make Tabitha’s wish come true by finding her father.

Learn more about the book and author at Frances Brody's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Boiling Season"

Christopher Hebert graduated from Antioch College, where he also worked at the Antioch Review. He has spent time in Guatemala, taught in Mexico, and worked as a research assistant to the author Susan Cheever. He earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and was awarded its prestigious Hopwood Award for Fiction. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his son and wife, the novelist Margaret Lazarus Dean.

Hebert applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Boiling Season, and reported the following:

Page 69 makes for a tough introduction to my main protagonist, Alexandre. He’s a young man from the slums of a turbulent Caribbean island. His dream, which is just being realized at this point in the book, is to escape his past, in which he sees only poverty and ignorance and violence. A few pages earlier he is hired by Mme Freeman, a wealthy American businesswoman, to act as caretaker of a derelict estate she’s purchased in the remote hills outside the capital. Derelict or not, the estate represents for Alexandre the place of peace and tranquility and beauty that he’s been searching for.

Page 69 consists of a conversation between Alexandre and his new employer as they drive through the countryside to their new estate. Alexandre, not the most reliable of narrators, spends the ride caught up in shame over what he sees. In his desperation to distance himself from it, he ends up projecting his own prejudices onto Mme Freeman. As an outsider to his world, she’s completely baffled by his apparent cold-heartedness.

If you read only this page, you wouldn’t leave it with many warm and fuzzy feelings toward Alexandre. But he’s a complicated guy living in a difficult place.

The excerpt:

[How] must all of this look like to her? I wondered. What must she think of us? And I felt shame, sitting there, watching the peasants outside my window. Everything about their struggle for survival seemed to me a manifestation of their deadly ignorance. How could you help not looking down on these people when you knew a world where none of this existed?

After several minutes, in an effort to ease her discomfort, I said, “It’s a disgrace.”

My voice appeared to shake Madame from whatever thoughts were preoccupying her.

“It makes me wish I could do something,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “But what can you do with people like these?”

“Surely they can be helped?”

“Of course,” I said. “But they must help themselves, too.”

“Are there schools?”

“Yes,” I said. “But not all the children go. How can you expect to improve your life if you don’t go to school?”

“Why don’t they go?”

“Their parents don’t think it important enough. They save no money.”

“School isn’t free?”

“Of course not. Everyone pays.”

“What if you can’t afford it?”

“One must find a way,” I said. “My father did. It’s the most important thing.”

She continued to look out the window, seemingly deep in thought. And then she turned to me with a puzzled expression. “I’m surprised you don’t have more compassion. These are your people, after all.”

“My people?” I said. Could she really not see the differences between them and me? I stammered on for a moment, but I saw no way to correct her without giving offense. All I shared with such ignorant people was an island. I did not see how the accident of my birth in this time and place compelled me toward loyalty with others simply because they shared the same fate.

Learn more about the book and author at Christopher Hebert's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Girlchild"

Tupelo Hassman graduated from Columbia's MFA program. Her writing has been published in Paper Street Press, The Portland Review Literary Journal, Tantalum, We Still Like, ZYZZYVA, and by 100WordStory.org and FiveChapters.com. Hassman is a contributing author to Heliography, Invisible City Audio Tours' first tour and is curating its fourth tour, The Landmark Revelation Society. She is keeping a video journal of girlchild's book tour for the short documentary Hardbound: A Novel's Life on the Road.

Hassman applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, girlchild, and reported the following:

The girlchild in girlchild is Rory Dawn Hendrix. Rory Dawn is a young girl playing a constant game of 52-card pickup with the mess of stories she’s been dealt about who her family is, who she is, and who, therefore, she’s destined to become. She gathers up the tales of her mother’s misadventures, reads the gleam in the school administrators’ eyes as they jealously chart Rory’s high test scores, dives into the reports from the welfare system that has long been keeping a close eye on her mother’s every move, and tries on the mythos of both the white underclass and the American Dream as represented by Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the dirty history of Eugenics. Rory is guided through all of this by a 40-year-old copy of the Girl Scout Handbook, which offers advice impractical but comforting, and by her grandmother, Shirley Rose. Grandma Shirley fights for Rory to believe in a future still wide open, despite what the slew of stories say. On page 69 we find out how girlchild got its name as Rory reflects on Shirley Rose’s words of encouragement and takes just a moment of breath to believe there might be worth in her inheritance after all.

From page 69:

…Grandma succeeds in reminding me of one thing, a small thing that lets me know that she is telling a truth in there somewhere. That there is a tenderness that runs quiet but sure in our blood and reveals itself as dependable a bedtime. It is the memory of Mama tucking me in at night, a name she had for me in the darkness. In the mornings when she woke me for school, I was always Sunshine, but at night I was always always girlchild.

Learn more about the book and author at Tupelo Hassman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Starboard Sea"

Amber Dermont received her MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including Dave Eggers’s Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope: All-Story, and Jane Smiley’s Best New American Voices 2006. A graduate of Vassar College, she received her Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. She currently serves as an associate professor of English and creative writing at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia.

Dermont applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Starboard Sea, and reported the following:

What a brilliant concept, to flip inside a book in the hopes of discovering whether a single page contains the entire world of the novel or just some sandy shoal. The Starboard Sea is the story of Jason Prosper, a young man who has transferred in his senior year of high school from Kensington Prep to Bellingham Academy. Jason is haunted by the mysterious suicide of his best friend and sailing partner, Cal. Page sixty-nine is significant to the narrative because it marks the first time that Jason shares a moment of friendship with Coach Tripp, the sailing instructor at his new school. An accomplished sailor, Jason quits the Bellingham sailing team during tryouts after a near fatal accident with his crewmember. The scene on page sixty-nine begins with Jason going down to the beach, seeing one of his classmates smoking and asking to bum a cigarette. Up until this point in the novel, Jason has been avoiding Coach Tripp and has found himself unmoored and alone. Jason is surprised to discover that the person sneaking a smoke is not one of his classmates but rather Coach Tripp. Jason apologizes for quitting the team and Coach Tripp admits how much he’d wanted to work with Jason. Tripp confesses to having seen Jason sail with Cal and also acknowledges that he is aware of the circumstances surrounding Cal’s death. The two share a cigarette and a moment of peace by the water. Jason listens as Coach Tripp tells a story about being lost at sea.

“I was out the other morning, alone,” Coach Tripp said. “The winds calm. The sun breaking over the water. Birds quiet. Sailed right into this mass of green fog, moist, lush air. Washed my eyes green. I lost all sense of direction. I forgot that I wasn’t a novice. Actually thought that I might have drifted off. Thought I was trapped for good in some strange ether.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing. I just kept her steady.” He stubbed his cigarette out against the seawall. “Fell out of the fog.”

The two go on to discuss ghost ships, circumnavigating the globe, and the history of celestial navigation. Throughout the novel, Jason must reconcile a series of losses and must contend with his own guilt and culpability. Bellingham Academy is not an easy place to call home especially not after the school is hit by a literal hurricane. Page sixty-nine is a quiet reprieve. The scene ends with Jason reflecting back on his talk with Coach Tripp and realizing, “I slept well that night because someone had been kind to me.”

Read more about The Starboard Sea, and visit Amber Dermont's Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Three Weeks in December"

Audrey Schulman has published four novels including The Cage, Swimming with Jonah, A House Named Brazil and, most recently, Three Weeks in December.

She applied the Page 69 Test to the new novel and reported the following:

With Three Weeks in December, I had three main aims.

1. I wanted to write a gripping story set in Africa. So in the foreword of the book I promise many violent deaths involving a major predator. I don’t even wait for page one.

2. I wanted the story to be so accurate and vivid the reader would trust me absolutely and feel as though s/he were there. So I visited Africa and read over 70 books. I read everything from novels to very dense history books. I wove what I learned seamlessly into the plot so there were no huge information dumps, but just fascinating tidbits all the way along, mostly conveyed through descriptions using all five senses.

(As a side note, I’ve never understood why more writers don’t use the oh-so-powerful sense of smell. A smell can summon emotion so quickly and, since it is underused in fiction, a succinct description of a familiar aroma can surprise a reader, yanking the imagination viscerally into the story.)

3. I wanted the protagonists to not be the normal characters put in adventure stories. No Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone. So I created two very untraditional main characters.

The main character I’m describing on page 69 is called Max. She has Asperger’s (a form of autism) and trusts her sense of smell more than her other senses. She is my hero and I make her tough in a highly unconventional way even Bruce Willis couldn’t match.

She has just arrived in Rwanda. I am describing a country most people haven’t experienced, through a perspective most have a hard time imagining.

First I describe the highway and traffic:

Here, it was startling how many people and belongings could fit on a moped. On the back of one were strapped two young goats, swaddled tightly as babies, eyes narrowed into the wind. Tied on another was an industrial-sized sink, a child peeking forlornly out of it.

Everyone wove from lane to lane, with little regard for the direction of traffic, unless the oncoming vehicle was bigger.

Then Max sits back, closes her eyes and starts smelling the many smells of Rwanda:

…wood smoke, rotting meat, cow manure, human feces and something that kept reminding her of cough drops until she opened her eyes to identify a passing tree as eucalyptus.

I am starting to pull the reader into her body, using her perceptions to make the reader feel everything she feels, so in spite of all the differences between the reader and Max, by the end of the book, as the plot tightens and the dangers build all around, the reader cares for her deeply.

The glowing reviews of my novel say I achieved all three of my aims very very well.

Learn more about the book and author at Audrey Schulman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"By Blood"

Ellen Ullman is the author of a novel, The Bug, a New York Times Notable Book and runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the cult classic memoir Close to the Machine, based on her years as a rare female computer programmer in the early years of the personal computer era.

Ullman applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, By Blood, and reported the following:

I don't think that page 69 represents the book; nor that a reader, starting here, would be happy to go on. There are too many antecedents for that one page to make much sense.

Now, in defense of page 1 from the test of page 69:

By Blood breaks page at the end of every short, numbered "scene." This results in a good deal of white space. So the first point in my defense is to say: My page 69 is not really page 69!

In further evidence of my case, I'll mention two sentences on page 10, where the narrator defends his decision to keep eavesdropping because he can't possibly understand what he's overhearing:

But it all meant nothing to me. I was like a person who had happened upon a novel opened at random.

Read more about By Blood at the Farrar, Straus and Giroux website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Remain In Light"

Collin Kelley is the author of the novel Conquering Venus and the poetry collections Better To Travel, After the Poison, Slow To Burn and the forthcoming Render. His new mystery/suspense novel, Remain In Light, is a 2012 finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction.

Kelley applied the Page 69 Test to Remain In Light and reported the following:

Page 69 isn’t representative of the mystery and intrigue of Remain In Light, but it does give a glimpse into the complicated personal lives of the main characters. Young expat American writer Martin Paige lives with Parisian widow Irène Laureux. They are searching for the man, Frederick Dubois, who killed Irène’s husband 30 years earlier during the 1968 student/worker riots, but have been road blocked by government cover-ups and sinister elements of France’s organized crime syndicate. Martin is casually involved with his neighbor, bookstore owner Euan McEvoy, but despite Irène’s urgings Martin isn’t interested in a committed relationship. When Diane Jacobs, Martin’s mouthy best friend from America, shows up looking for a place to live, it creates tension.

Irène has encouraged Martin to move across the hall and live with Euan, but Martin believes it will give Euan false hope about their relationship. Instead, Martin proposes something else.

“Martin, you spend many nights at Euan’s,” Irene said. “What is the difference?”

“There is a difference,” Martin said. “It may seem like a small gesture to you, but to Euan it will be huge. I said we were going to try and make it work. ‘Try’ being the optimum word. I don’t want to give him false hope.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Diane muttered. “Well, I’ll just trot back over to the hotel and give them my last shekels. Don’t mind me.”

“This is insane,” Irène said. “You can’t live at the hotel.”

They heard a knock at the front door and Euan called out a greeting as he let himself in. Euan came into the kitchen and stopped short when he saw the three of them standing there. “I changed my mind about the cinema,” he said. “I thought you were flying back across the pond today, Diane.”

“I think I might be staying on a little longer.”

“How long?”

“Forever,” Diane said in a looming voice.

“Oh...really…” Euan said, forcing a smile.

“Yes, indeedy. The Jewess is here to stay and needs a job and a place to live.”

Euan, always taken aback by Diane’s brassy ways, had no comment.

“You have an extra bedroom, Euan,” Martin said. “Why don’t you rent it out?”

Euan cut his eyes at Martin. “Well…I…I barely know Diane. Couldn’t she stay here with Irène?”

“We’ve come full circle,” Diane said. “This hot potato is going back to the hotel and cut a deal with the old man there. Maybe I can scare him into hiring me as a maid.”

Diane left the kitchen and they all stood staring at each other until they heard the front door close.

Euan was outraged. “Staying at my flat for a few nights is one thing, but offering it to her permanently is outrageous. Just because she arrives with no resources doesn’t mean we have to accommodate her.”

Diane is actually in Paris working with a detective to find David McLaren, who happens to be Martin’s unstable ex-boyfriend. Diane doesn’t want David to interrupt Martin’s new life in Paris and reignite their volatile affair, but she discovers that David’s disappearance is connected to drugs, government secrets and possibly the elusive Frederick Dubois.

For more about Remain In Light and the author, visit Collin Kelley's website, his Facebook page, or follow him on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Technologists"

Matthew Pearl is the author of the novels The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens, and his newest work, The Technologists. His books have been New York Times bestsellers and international bestsellers translated into more than 30 languages. His nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and Slate.com. He has been heard on shows including NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Weekend Edition Sunday," and his books have been featured on Good Morning America and CBS Sunday Morning.

Pearl applied the Page 69 Test to The Technologists and reported the following:

From page 69:

"If I could but live to see it, I hope that we might make a small but important accomplishment: that our institution be understood rather than feared so that our students can step forward into the world outside and proudly call out a promise, 'We are Technology.' ... If I could but live to see it," Rogers repeated, in softer tones, his eyes meeting Marcus's as the student perched back on the edge of his stool. For a moment, it seemed they were the only two present, and that they were testing each other.

In this scene, William Barton Rogers, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, meets with his faculty to discuss a series of scientific disasters that are plaguing Boston. Our protagonist Marcus is one of the first students, part of the Class of 1868 which had been busy enough preparing to graduate when everything seemed to go haywire around them. Marcus is a "charity scholar," picked out from a factory floor to attend the experimental and controversial M.I.T. Instead of tuition, Marcus performs various functions for the college, including attending to the needs of the professors at faculty meetings like this
one. This is a pivotal moment for Marcus, internalizing the words Rogers says, presumably not to him but to the faculty members, as a call to action. Will Marcus decide to enter the dangerous path he has in mind, to investigate the unseen menace in Boston?

I love underdog stories. In this case something we associate with power, wealth and impact--technology--was thought to be a dead end pursuit. It made for an interesting reversal that, in my mind, makes great material for historical fiction.

Learn more about the author and his work at Matthew Pearl's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Poe Shadow.

The Page 99 Test: The Last Dickens.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Spin"

Catherine McKenzie was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. A graduate of McGill University and McGill Law School, McKenzie practices law in Montreal. Her novels Spin and Arranged are International Bestsellers. They, along with her third novel, Forgotten, will all be published in the US by William Morrow in 2012.

McKenzie applied the Page 69 Test to Spin and reported the following:

If I do say so myself I think page 69 is very representative of the rest of the book. Katie – the main character – is getting a tour of the rehab facility and all the elements of her personality at that point are on display – cynicism, sarcasm, humor (I hope) and bucking against authority. I think (hope) if a reader read this page at random they’d want to read on: you can tell she’s being shown around a rehab facility, but why is she there? There is also a hint that there’s a celebrity in the facility at the same time, who is it? Katie doesn’t seem to want to be in rehab, so why is she there? Read on to find out…

Learn more about the book and author at Catherine McKenzie's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Healing"

Jonathan Odell is the author of the acclaimed novel The View from Delphi, which deals with the struggle for equality in pre-civil rights Mississippi, his home state. His new novel, The Healing (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday), explores the subversive role that story plays in the healing of an oppressed people.

He applied the Page 69 Test to The Healing and reported the following:

What a perfect place to land, page 69! The first 68 pages are the build-up to a new character unlike anyone on this 1860 slave plantation has ever seen before. She is an ancient black woman, and she is a “bought” slave, unlike the other 300 slaves who were born and raised on this isolated stretch of drained Delta swampland. Besides being an outsider, they quickly sense she possesses a confidence like no other slave they have encountered. And thirdly, they know, since she cost the the Master the amazing sum of $5000, she had to be bought for some special function that none could guess. Page 69 sees everyone on the plantation, cooks, weavers, dairymen and even the white Mistress and her son, watch this mysterious woman drive her wagon of supplies into the yard, handling the mules like a man. Thus enters Polly Shine, a slave healer, and with her begins the mystery that plays our over the next 300 pages—is Polly a magician, a conjurer, a witch or a redeemer?

Page 69:

ond-guessed herself. It couldn’t be woman. The driver handled the four-mule wagon like a man, spitting tobacco off the side of the wheels and popping the reins sharply. A Choctaw Indian maybe!

Little Lord took off down the steps and Granada took off after him. At the foot of the stairs Granada came to a stop, but Little Lord continued to race toward the galloping horse. Master Ben grasped the boy under the arm and hoisted him up into the saddle. From his perch between his father and the pommel, Little Lord found Granada’s eyes and then stuck his tongue out at her. They both exploded into fits of giggles.

A spirit of hilarity hung over the entire plantation. For days servants had been in a state of high anticipation. Like Granada, the younger ones had never seen a bought Negro before, and the older ones thought they might never see one again, especially one from as far away as the Carolinas.

The whole yard came out to watch. Washwomen and spinners and weavers, dairy and stable hands, the children too young to work and the old ones too feeble, they all gathered in the yard. From inside the mansion, house slaves peeked out from French plate windows. Even Mistress Amanda stepped onto the upstairs gallery with Daniel Webster perched upon her shoulder and watched as the wagon rolled into the yard.

The driver jerked back on the reigns and the horses pulled to a stop in front of the new four-room cabin while everybody stood there with chins nearly touching the ground.

It was a woman after all!

“Lord, she a sight!” Granada whispered to herself. She had never seen anything like her. The stranger was reddish brown with pointed cheekbones and amber eyes. Bird feathers stuck out of her braids this way and that, and around her neck she wore a ponderous necklace made of gleaming white shells. She was as skinny as a river bird, and draped over her shoulders was a mangy wrap made from the fur of some animal Granada imagined being too ugly to ever have lived.

Learn more about the book and author at Jonathan Odell's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fifth Victim"

Zoë Sharp is the author of the Charlie Fox series of crime thrillers which have been twice nominated for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel.

Sharp applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Fifth Victim and reported the following:

Fifth Victim finds Charlie Fox bodyguarding Dina, the wayward daughter of rich Long Island businesswoman, Caroline Willner. A number of Dina’s social circle have been through kidnap ordeals, and Charlie quickly discovers that the girl seems fascinated by the clique formed by the ex-victims.

Page 69 is the last half-page of chapter nine in both the UK and US editions, so I didn’t even have any regional variation to play with. As such, it’s a fairly brief section of a scene, but part of an important one. At a lavish birthday party for billionaire’s son, Torquil Eisenberg, Charlie hopes to meet the former kidnap victims Dina seems so enamoured of – Orlando, Benedict and Manda. To avoid any awkward questions Charlie has been introduced as a family friend, which works out fine until she’s forced to tackle the birthday boy to prevent him getting out of hand with her principal. Dina and Charlie are being hustled out by security when Manda and Benedict make their grand entrance. They seem dismayed to find Dina leaving…

From Page 69:

“I’m real sorry, Manda,” [Dina] said hastily. “But I don’t want to spoil Torquil’s birthday, so we’ll—”

“Oh, that’s so sweet of you,” Manda interrupted. “Well, honey, our limo’s still here. Tell you what, why don’t the three of us go find somewhere to have a drink? Tor won’t mind if we skip out, I’m sure.”

But it didn’t take an expert in body language to tell that Tor did mind. He minded like hell.

The two security men he’d sent to escort us out were hovering with their mouths open, unsure what to do next. The other partygoers who’d received their special invitations had emerged from the yacht club and were closing fast on their way to the Eisenberg liner…

Torquil must have known that for Benedict and Manda to leave now, so soon after arriving and with Dina so publicly in tow, would be the ultimate humiliation. He only had one realistic option, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“It would spoil the party if you left, Dina,” he said, with an almost credible attempt at sincerity. “Stay.” I’m sure it was only shock that made her keep him waiting for a response, but he flushed at her silence and added through clenched teeth. “Please.”

“I … er … yes,” Dina said faintly. “Of course. Thank you, Torquil.”

He glared at her. “Don’t mention it,” he said, his tone ominous. His gaze swung to me. “But your friend still needs to leave.”

Learn more about the author and her work at Zoë Sharp's website.

The Page 69 Test: Third Strike.

--Marshal Zeringue