"Shot Through the Book"

Eva Gates, also known as Vicki Delany, is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than forty-five books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: the Catskill Summer Resort mysteries for Penguin Random House, the Tea by the Sea mysteries for Kensington, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series for Crooked Lane Books, and the Lighthouse Library series (as Eva Gates) for Crooked Lane.

Delany is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada and co-founder and organizer of the Women Killing It Crime Writing Festival. Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, the Bony Blithe, the Ontario Library Association Golden Oak, and the Arthur Ellis Awards. Delany is the recipient of the 2019 Derrick Murdoch Award for contributions to Canadian crime writing. She lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

The latest Lighthouse Library mystery is Shot Through the Book, the twelfth title in the series.

Delany applied the Page 69 Test to Shot Through the Book and reported the following:

Sadly, page 69 of Shot Through the Book, the twelfth Lighthouse Library mystery, written by me under the pen name of Eva Gates and published by Crooked Lane Books, fails the Page 69 Test completely.

“No.” Watson said. “I am not going to do that. Lucy, please continue.”

Louise Jane fell back in her seat with a puff of air and a disapproving pout.

“Far from hoping to commune with his spirit,” I said, “she wanted to take photographs of herself at the site of the incident.” I went on to relate what happened in as much detail as I could without overdramatizing (enough of that, thank you, Louise Jane) including the presence of not only her personal assistant but a photographer.

“That is interesting,” Watson said when I finished. “She didn’t tell me about the visit, and I’ve no reason to believe, at this time, it’s directly connected to any motives behind Harrison’s death. But, I do have to wonder why she didn’t mention it to me. Judging by the timing, she would have come directly to the station after leaving your place. She did not have a photographer or anyone else with her, although she might have left them outside.”

“What line of work is she in that she has a PA following her around?" Ronald asked.

“You told me she was an unemployed journalist,” I said to Watson. “It’s possible she’s mentoring an unpaid intern. The woman was young enough to be a college student or an intern. She didn’t look at all comfortable in her job.”

“Why did you make a point of asking Louise Jane and me to be here now?” Ronald asked. “Be quiet, Louise Jane and let Lucy answer.” Louise Jane continued to pout, but she said nothing.

“Because Heather made an accusation to me about another person, and I believe she said the same to Detective Watson. Before this goes any further, I thought we should talk, in front

It is, truth be told, a pretty dull page. People are exchanging information, and although this information is important to the story, it doesn’t say enough to reveal anything about who the characters are (other than their names), the setting, or even the mood of the book. “Harrison’s death” is mentioned, so we can assume this is a murder case, but little else.

Four people are talking, and although they are all named, we don’t learn anything about any of them, or what their relationship is, or what role they play in the book. A small clue might be that the only character referred to by his surname, is in fact, the police detective, although that is not confirmed until the second last line on the page.

On this page the characters have gathered in an unnamed place, not a hint of setting, location, atmosphere is given. It isn’t even clear that this is intended to be a cozy mystery, and the characters have gathered in the library.

I hope despite this (admittedly) dull page, the reader will be interested enough to want to know what these people are talking about. Which is, why was a bestselling YA author shot by an arrow standing on the deck of Lucy McNeil’s beach house, one pleasant summer’s evening in the Outer Banks, while she was inside getting the lemonade.

Follow Eva Gates on Facebook, and visit Vicki Delany's website.

The Page 69 Test: Death By Beach Read.

Writers Read: Eva Gates (June 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Death Knells and Wedding Bells.

Writers Read: Eva Gates (June 2023).

Writers Read: Eva Gates (May 2024).

The Page 69 Test: The Stranger in the Library.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Michael Without Apology"

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

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Michael Without Apology, and reported the following:

As it turns out, page 69 of Michael is the end of a chapter, and a short page. Here’s the text:

He brought the letter to school with him, where he stood in front of his locker and tore it into pieces the size of confetti. He never opened it. He ripped it up still sealed, envelope and all.

Then he carried the pieces, clutched tightly in his fist, into the boys’ room, where he flushed them down the toilet.

They didn’t go down properly. They caused a clog, and the toilet overflowed.

And Michael thought, That figures.

It was like a sign to him that the envelope and its dreaded contents had been nothing but trouble. Like something that rises up from hell and still has a little of the evil in it.

He moved out of the stall quickly before any of the toilet water could get on his shoes, and left the whole mess behind him.

Here’s what I do like about this page 69 test: These actions are a pretty visual and visceral sign of an upset child, and I think it would tend to make the reader curious as to what was in that letter and who sent it to him. So it might be good in terms of making the reader want to read more.

Here’s what I don’t like about it: Most of the novel is set in the present, when Michael is 19, and following him into his early 20s. There are just a few chapters that go back to his childhood, to help the reader understand how he ended up scarred on so many different levels, including the literal scarring. But this just happened to be one of the latter. This page is about the wound, and the book is about the healing. It’s about unapologetically presenting yourself to the world as you are, dropping all the shame and judgment around body image and appearance. And that aspect feels much more important to me than how he ended up scarred in the first place.

So… on balance, I’m going to say that this page 69 does not test especially well, as my books go.

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.

The Page 69 Test: Rolling Toward Clear Skies.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Perturbation of O"

Joseph G. Peterson is the author of several works of fiction and poetry. He grew up in Wheeling, Illinois, received his B.A. from the University of Chicago, and his MA. from Roosevelt University. The Des Plaines River and the forest preserves surrounding it winds through the town of Wheeling, and through the imaginary territory of many of his books. He currently lives with his family in the Chicago neighborhood, Hyde Park, on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.

Peterson applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Perturbation of O, and reported the following:

The Page 69 Test works for The Perturbation of O.

My latest book is a conversation between two people who are meeting each other for the first time in seventeen years. They encounter each other in a cafe by accident and Regina Blast introduces herself to Gideon Anderson who wrote a famous memoir called, Gideon's Confession. In the memoir, Gideon writes a couple of pages about Regina's art-work, because Regina is a painter, and he describes the brief sexual encounter that they shared. When the book becomes famous, partly because of a revealing episode Gideon had when he appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show, Regina becomes famous as that person in his book with whom Gideon had sex. She also becomes famous for her paintings when Oprah visits Regina's studio and in the encounter with Regina alters forever the trajectory of Regina's art career. The conversation between Gideon and Regina takes place in alternating chapters where each character in a pyrotechnic of speech responds to the other's speech. Page 69 of The Perturbation of O takes place at a new chapter break, and Gideon is responding to Regina trying to explain why he thinks both of their lives were changed forever by their encounter with Oprah Winfrey. He says to Regina, "Shall we call it, I asked Regina, The Perturbation of Oprah Winfrey? She is an irresistible force unto herself, and one falls into her orbit by accident or will to be changed forever by the encounter." Later, Gideon refines his concept by asking if this force of Oprah which is a benevolent force should quite simply be called, The Perturbation of O? He thus names the title of the memoir of his new encounter with Regina that he will go on to write in an act of betrayal to Regina who swore Gideon to secrecy making him pledge that what happens between them stays between them.

Visit Joseph G. Peterson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Beautiful Piece.

Writers Read: Joseph G. Peterson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Enemy's Daughter"

Melissa Poett majored in music composition, first telling stories with instruments before switching her medium to words. She now writes young adult novels in a variety of genres ranging from contemporary to romantasy. She lives in Canada, and The Enemy’s Daughter is her debut novel.

Poett applied the Page 69 Test to The Enemy’s Daughter and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Fesber—that’s the antidote and will help the kidneys. Use the leaves, too. They assist with circulation and oxygenating the blood. Let’s start with that: fesber tea made with the whole plant, even the root.”

Why aren’t they moving?

“Don’t you know what it is?” I ask. “Small purple flower with fuzzy leaves. It grows in the rocky, higher ground. You must have some of that around here. Get me some paper, I’ll draw it for you. And crushed white thistle! He’ll need that, too, to support the liver...” So many other plants come to mind, but there isn’t time.

Samuel shares a skeptical look with Ryland. They know what I know: it’s too late. These remedies could’ve helped Tristan if he didn’t have a lethal dose of poison in his body. Now, he’s too far gone.

Which is why I need them to go and search for this flower.

After I fail to take back the poison, I’m going to have to make my escape.

“Make it concentrated,” I continue, my voice turning desperate. “A handful of each plant and cover just enough with water and simmer. It will need to be given for days. Maybe weeks. He’ll have to drink buckets of it. But it will help.”

I straighten my shoulders, doing my best to look confident that this is still a viable option.

“Go,” Vador commands without taking his eyes off Tristan.

“You, too, Ryland. Help him. We don’t have much time.”

Samuel flexes his fists like he’s about to punch a hole in the wall. “Fine. But if he’s dead when I return, I’m the one who gets to kill her.”

I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised to find that page 69 of The Enemy's Daughter offers a fairly rounded picture of the story—at least the key parts.

The Enemy's Daughter is a reimagining of the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde and unfolds in three pivotal parts: the main characters are cast as enemies, a poisoning occurs, and a love potion ultimately binds them together.

Page 69 includes all three of those things. Here we see that Isadora, a young healer, is trapped in enemy territory and in grave danger. The stakes are high, not only for her, but for her people, who are dependant on her to escape her enemy captors. Tristan, an elite enemy soldier, has been poisoned, and Isadora must find a way to save his life or face death.

At the end of this passage, the reader is given a glimpse of what will eventually lead to a kind of love potion—a rare magic that will irrevocably bind them together. It sets them on a path toward a fateful choice: will they give into their growing attraction, putting aside a decades-long war . . . or will they betray the other to save their own people?

Visit Melissa Poett's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"American Fire"

Andrew Erkkila is a former Gila Hotshot with four seasons of fire experience. He has fought fire in most of the western U.S. In 2011, he was honored with the S.W.E.A.T. Award (Superior Work Ethic and Teamwork).

He graduated from the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, The Master's Review, the New Orleans Review and was listed as a finalist in the 2019 Zoetrope All-Story Screenplay Contest judged by Francis Ford Coppola and as a finalist in the Missouri Review’s 2019 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. His work has also been featured on the Great New American Essays podcast and optioned for television.

Erkkila is adjunct faculty at the The College of New Jersey and Rutgers-Newark Writing Program.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, American Fire, and reported the following:

From page 69:

When I ran away at seventeen, I knew one thing—the only real death is avoiding life. So I did what everyone that age does. I went to New York to be an artist, but mostly I did regrettable things, and went broke.

I’m fine now. But I also know crazy never leaves. It lives inside. My New York uncle is proof. He took me in when I moved there. He taught me carpentry. And discipline. He could fix anything. Except his own mind. He started hearing voices until he no longer knew what was real. My brother was no different. Sometimes I worry I’m like that too.

I walk out onto my porch with a bottle of whiskey. Sparrows dart from twig to twig.

My mother says the same things. Life is with people, and if I live nowhere, I don’t exist. She begs me to think of one good memory from childhood. One family dinner? I can. But it doesn’t matter. It’s hard to live without family. But it’s even harder to tell my mother she’s brainwashed. Because that’s the thing about brainwashed people. They don’t know.

The night spins on briskly. Drunk as this, it’s like I’m submerged. I only hear noises. Distortion. Maybe it’s my unspeakably high tolerance for pain. I used to love this job. But now every day I ask myself what the hell I’m doing, taking shit from twenty-year-olds. I’m an underpaid babysitter. Death, old age, going nuts, blind, ending up alone, I can’t keep track of the daily list of fears. Now I have Bronson’s cloudy lungs to worry about. I might as well quit. Or get fired.

I empty the bottle. I shout to the trees, the wind, the valley. I cry. My voice is the only voice in the night.

I trudge back to bed, but don’t sleep. I fall through the dreamless hole that every drunk knows, and cross to the other side.

The Page 69 Test works remarkably well in capturing the emotional core of American Fire. The book can be categorized as an adventure story—a genre that privileges action over interiority. In this passage, however, Tanya, the main character, who is also an alcoholic, exists in her drunkest and most vulnerable moment. In the safe space of her off-the-grid cabin, she comes to grips with some troubling behavioral patterns that stem from her upbringing in an extremely religious household. Tanya is defined by her freedom, but longs for friendship—two concepts often at odds. True friendship requires sacrifice and selflessness; freedom, a bit more nebulous, can be defined as the unhindered ability to unapologetically be.

Much of the book is about fighting fire, working on an elite team in New Mexico. But what drives a person towards a career in fire? In this section, we clearly see what keeps her up at night. Who she wants to be. Even now, she still believes she can only define herself in opposition to her parents. This is an important stage for anyone, when someone reaches a turning point. She sees the pathway to becoming the person she wants to be, but will she take it? Will she discover that by doing so she will find the freedom that comes with it?

Visit Andrew Erkkila's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Booked for Revenge"

Karen Rose Smith is the author of the new Jazzi Swanson Mysteries, the Daisy’s Tea Garden Mysteries, the Caprice De Luca Home-Staging Mysteries, and the Tomes & Tea Mystery Series. Married to her college sweetheart, Smith has convinced her husband that felines can make purr-fect housemates. They share their home in the Susquehanna Valley of Pennsylvania with their many rescued cats.

Smith applied the Page 69 Test to her latest Tomes & Tea mystery, Booked for Revenge, and reported the following:

Page 69 depicts several elements from my cozy, including my sleuth’s bond with her two rescued kittens. When there is a knock on the door and she unlocks the deadbolt she’d had installed in the spring, the reader has a sense about a previous murder. She opens the door to the detective she’s butted heads with in book 1, Murder Marks the Page. He visits her on her break from running the bookstore—she lives upstairs— to talk about her involvement in his latest murder investigation. The Page 69 Test works well for Booked for Revenge. A browser would get the feel of the cozy mystery.

Since my Tomes & Tea series is a spin off from my Daisy’s Tea Garden series, readers will now see Jazzi, Daisy’s daughter, in a new light. She is twenty five, living in a lake resort town location different from Amish country where her mom solved ten murder cases. But as the detective soon realizes, Jazzi is her mother’s daughter. In Booked for Revenge, Jazzi’s best friend and partner in their Tomes & Tea bookstore and tea bar, Dawn Fernsby, finds one of the contestants in Belltower Landing’s Gentleman’s Bake Off bludgeoned with a cutting board! While Jazzi helps her through the aftermath of the trauma, she realizes Dawn will only find peace again if the killer is caught. Jazzi begins registering clues from the suspects—the four judges who are renowned chefs as well as the men competing in the bake off. When two of the chefs squabble at the book signing for their cookbooks and anywhere else where they come into contact, Jazzi realizes there is a history of bad blood between them. After the murder of one of the contestants, a photographer who shoots wedding video, she realizes the men involved in the bake off also hide their own secrets. She begins to unearth them, putting herself in danger from the killer.

Visit Karen Rose Smith's website, Facebook page, and Instagram page.

Coffee with a Canine: Karen Rose Smith & Hope and Riley.

The Page 69 Test: Staged to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Murder with Lemon Tea Cakes.

The Page 69 Test: Murder Marks the Page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Shadow of the Solstice"

Anne Hillerman is the bestselling author of the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series. Shadow of the Solstice is her tenth novel in the series, which was created by her father, Tony Hillerman. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she is at work on her next novel.

Hillerman applied the Page 69 Test to Shadow of the Solstice and reported the following:

The Page 69 Test takes browsers to a sweet, interesting scene in Shadow of the Solstice, but it doesn’t provide a fair idea of what the mystery is about. Readers who picked up the book based on this excerpt would be in for a giant surprise when they learn that the novel deals with murder, exploitation, addiction, kidnapping, deep deception, a visiting dignitary, the power of community, and the courage to do the right thing.

Shadow of the Solstice weaves together two stories. The main plot, not even hinted at on page 69, involves a body discovered at a uranium disposal site and outsiders who come to the Navajo Nation for a solstice retreat. However, group leaders plan something very different from meditation to mark the year’s longest day.

The excerpt comes from the secondary plot. Darleen Manuelito, the younger sister of my protagonist, Officer Bernadette Manuelito, is working as a home health aide for a Navajo grandmother, Mrs. Raymond. Darleen arrives at Mrs. R’s house, but the woman doesn’t answer the door. When Darleen searches unsuccessfully for the old lady she finds the woman’s precious carved turtle fetish in a field outside her house. The discovery reminds Darleen of a story the woman told her about why turtles are sacred to the Navajo, and why Mrs. R kept the turtle in her pocket. I use that story to illustrate the elder’s solid grounding in her Navajo culture and to show the connection and affection between these two characters. I draw on both these elements to develop this storyline and add tension to the novel.

I introduced Darleen in my very first book in the series, Spider Woman’s Daughter. Nine novels later, she has matured into a thoughtful, caring grownup. In Shadow of the Solstice, Darleen has the opportunity to act heroically, and she rises to the occasion.

Visit Anne Hillerman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Spider Woman's Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: Spider Woman's Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: Song of the Lion.

The Page 69 Test: The Tale Teller.

Q&A with Anne Hillerman.

The Page 69 Test: The Sacred Bridge.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Summer Light on Nantucket"

Nancy Thayer is the author of 35 novels, including Summer Love, Family Reunion, A Nantucket Christmas, and The Hot Flash Club. Her books are about families, friendship, and the beautiful island of Nantucket where she’s lived for 39 years with her husband Charley Walters and their spoiled cat Callie. Sometimes they invite their thousands of grandchildren to visit. She loves libraries, bookstores, and zoom parties.

Thayer's novels have appeared on the New York Times best-seller lists, in Redbook, Good Housekeeping, and Cosmo UK, and are translated into many languages.

Her novel Let It Snow was made into a Hallmark Christmas movie entitled Nantucket Noel in 2021.

A Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1983, she was awarded the RT 2015 Career Achievement Award for Mainstream Fiction.

Thayer applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Summer Light on Nantucket, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Summer Light on Nantucket, Blythe Benedict, 45, is chatting with Celeste, her ex-mother-in-law and good friend.

Celeste remarks that Blythe is glowing after talking with a handsome man.

Holly, 11, slips up to take her mother's hand, and as they walk out into the evening, Blythe thinks about her four children, how sweet and adorable they were when they were young, and how the two oldest ones, in their late teens, are not quite so adorable.

This novel is about families and the wonderful and difficult complications of being part of a family. It's about a divorced mother falling in love again--with her children all around her. It's about two women who care for each other in spite of the divorce between them. It's about a mother balancing her days between her children's needs and her own newly-discovered adult desires. It's about many different kinds of love and being present to enjoy them all, even while being present for the newest crisis--a rash, a broken heart, an ex-husband's secret. It’s about a woman who sees her husband’s girlfriend kissing another man.

It's about the summer light on a beautiful island, how clear it can be, how it illuminates life, how a man’s gaze can feel like sunlight on a cold day.

Yes, page 69 captures the essence of my new novel.

Visit Nancy Thayer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Summer House.

The Page 69 Test: Beachcombers.

My Book, The Movie: Beachcombers.

Writers Read: Nancy Thayer (May 2015).

My Book, The Movie: The Guest Cottage.

The Page 69 Test: The Guest Cottage.

The Page 69 Test: Summer Love.

Writers Read: Nancy Thayer.

My Book, The Movie: Summer Light on Nantucket.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blood on the Vine"

J. T. Falco is a screenwriter, TV writer, and showrunner who has developed original series and feature films for Peacock, Amazon, ABC, The CW, and USA. He has also written on shows like Charmed, Sleepy Hollow, and Heroes Reborn, none of which are anything like Blood on the Vine, his first novel. When he’s not writing, he can usually be found drinking wine in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, Leigh, and his two children.

Falco applied the Page 69 Test to Blood on the Vine and reported the following:

Well, consider me officially sold on the Page 69 Test.

My first novel, Blood on the Vine, is a mystery about a series of dark and twisted murders that take place in one of the most glamorous places on the planet: Napa Valley. It’s about long-held family secrets, a woman’s attempt to piece back together a shattered life, and of course…wine. And at least the first two elements are explored rather clearly on page 69.

In the excerpt below, you’ll see a conversation between our heroine, FBI Agent Lana Burrell, and the one-time love of her life, Jonah Bancroft — the high school boyfriend who she let slip away because of a personal tragedy when she was a teenager. Now, they’ve been thrust back together for the first time in twenty years because of two murders that seem to implicate his mother, one of the most successful winemakers in Napa.

“Jonah, if you know something about these murders—”

“I don’t,” he says with an earnest look I remember well and can’t help but trust. “But I do know my mom’s gotten caught up with certain people who don’t necessarily have her best interests at heart.”

“What people?”

“Bad people.” But before he can say another word, his phone buzzes in his pocket, a valve that instantly releases the pressure building in our conversation. He eagerly checks it: “It’s Keri,” he explains as he types a text back to her. “Cole’s been going through some stuff lately, and he can be a lot when we try to eat out.”

“Go. Dad duty calls.”

He nods appreciatively and starts to leave, when one last urgent thought sends him whirling back around to face me. “Just promise you’ll be careful.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve handled a lot worse than anything this place can throw at me.”

He swallows nervously, and again I see that desperate desire to share some painful secret. “I wish that were true, Lana. I really do.”

“Jonah, what aren’t you telling me? Who are these bad people you’re so scared of?”

He falls silent, taking a moment to choose his words with life-affirming precision, as if a single wrong syllable could spell death for him, or me, or possibly both. Finally, he glances back at the bar and lowers his voice to a paranoid whisper. “Have you noticed how many days passed between the two murders?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. A month?”

“Not exactly…”

I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a helpful window into Lana’s character, but from a plot perspective, you really can’t ask for much more. Right there we have mention of our murders, our chief suspect, and the first subtle tease of something darker at play in Napa: a subplot involving a cult and the peculiarities of biodynamic farming that turn a simple murder investigation into something far more sinister and unexpected. Honestly, I doubt there’s another page in the entire book that teases the murder mystery quite so well.

As for what page 69 doesn’t do — well, it doesn’t mention the second most important “character” in the book: wine. Because at its core, this isn’t just a murder mystery. It’s an exploration of a unique and fascinating industry, as well as all the ways that wine is a metaphor for personal growth and change. After all, the more a vine struggles – the more you deprive it of water – the more complex and delicious a wine it produces. And the same goes for all of us as people. It’s our struggles that make us great, so long as we find ways to let them fuel us rather than hold us back. But of course, those are big ideas that take far more than a single page to unpack, so hopefully anyone intrigued by Page 69 will give the full book a chance to find out more.

Visit J.T. Falco's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fair Play"

Louise Hegarty’s work has appeared in Banshee, the Tangerine, the Stinging Fly, and the Dublin Review, and has been featured on BBC Radio 4’s Short Works. She was the inaugural winner of the Sunday Business Post/Penguin Ireland Short Story Prize. Her short story “Getting the Electric” has been optioned by Fíbín Media. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

Hegarty applied the Page 69 Test to Fair Play, her debut novel, and reported the following:

On page 69, Abigail and her aunt are meeting with a funeral director to organise her brother’s funeral. It begins: Abigail wanted to be cremated. She had told Benjamin sometime after the death of their father. She had sat through enough funerals now to know exactly what she wanted. She was certain: ‘Scatter my ashes on their graves and on the cliffs near the cove.’ She thinks he wanted the same, but the memory isn’t strong enough and so now, tasked with the decision of what to do with his remains, she isn’t quite sure.

Fair Play is split into two parts: Abigail’s contemporary life and the murder mystery that she has found herself starring in. I think page 69 very much gets across Abigail’s grief after the sudden death of her brother, but it might come as a shock to the reader to find out that a large chunk of the book is in fact a subversion of the detective genre. It is very interesting to me that page 69 is the first time we meet Abigail since the death of her brother – she has been missing from the page for a couple of chapters. I think the Page 69 Test works well in regard to that side of the narrative – we feel her sadness amidst the practicalities of death - but I think because of the structure of my novel the test only half-works on this occasion.

Learn more about Fair Play at the publisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Eat, Slay, Love"

Julie Mae Cohen is a UK-bestselling author of book club and romantic fiction, including the award-winning novel Together. Her work has been translated into 17 languages. She is vice president of the Romantic Novelists’ Association in the UK. Julie grew up in western Maine and studied English at Brown University, Cambridge University, and the University of Reading, where she is now an associate lecturer in creative writing. She lives in Berkshire in the United Kingdom.

Cohen applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Eat, Slay, Love, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Eat, Slay, Love, one of my novel’s three protagonists, Marina, is talking with her ex-husband, Jake, who abandoned her and their three very young children for a younger woman. Jake has turned up unexpectedly to take the kids for the weekend. (This extract is very slightly edited.)

Jake asked, "What will you do all weekend when I’ve got the rugrats?"

Marina was so startled that he’d asked her an actual question about herself that she answered honestly.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. Maybe I’ll read a book and do some gardening?”

Jake snorted.

“I don’t know what’s happened to you, Marina. You used to be such a fun girl. So easygoing and carefree. You’ve changed so much. Freya reminds me of the way you used to be, actually. It was one of the things that made me notice her.”

Ewan’s diaper bag was heavy, full of wipes and bottles and cans of follow-on milk. If she “accidentally” swung it at Jake’s crotch, she could hit him hard enough to hurt, maybe hard enough so that he couldn’t fuck his new girlfriend, but not so hard that he dropped the baby he was holding.

Instead she smiled and said, “Have a great weekend!”

Thematically, page 69 of Eat, Slay, Love is spot-on for the entire novel. The story is about three women who have been treated badly by men or the patriarchy in various ways, and about how they make friends with each other and find their own strength and power. Because Eat, Slay, Love is a funny thriller, they happen to find their own strength and power through kidnapping and murdering a man who’s preyed on all of them. That man isn’t Jake*, but in this passage, Jake is an example of some of the ways that men take advantage of women in our society, particularly when it comes to child-rearing.

Jake hasn’t been a hands-on dad, and he’s abandoned his kids, leaving Marina with three children under the age of five to look after on her own. He’s also lost all of the family’s money through bad investments. He’s a terrible father and husband—while Marina put her own career on hold in order to look after the house and their family. But he still blames Marina for the breakdown of their marriage, because she’s no longer a ‘fun girl’. As if it’s easy to be carefree when you’ve been breastfeeding and changing diapers constantly for nearly five years, with no help.

Marina has been suppressing violent urges, like the urge to slam the diaper bag into Jake’s crotch…but she’s not a naturally violent person. She’s just angry at how she’s been devalued by the world, and she’s not allowed to express it. She won’t realise exactly how angry she is until she meets Lilah and Opal, the other two protagonists of Eat, Slay, Love, and their friendship allows her to be her truest self.

Not all the men in the book are horrible, by the way. The novel is a humorous and bloody examination of how some men control, coerce, abuse, and dismiss women, and how women can take their revenge. But some of the men in the book are kind and loving and thoughtful—and it’s part of my protagonists’ journey to recognise the difference between a good man and a bad one, and make wise choices about relationships.

It’s just a shame that on the way, one or two of their bad choices have to be murdered, dismembered and disposed of where no one will find them.

*Jake doesn’t die, but he does get his own comeuppance. Some readers have told me that’s their favourite part of the book.

Visit Julie Mae Cohen's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bad Men.

Q&A with Julie Mae Cohen.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Midnight in Soap Lake"

Matthew Sullivan is the beloved author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors’ Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Daily Beast, and Shelf Awareness amongst others.

Sullivan applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Midnight in Soap Lake, and reported the following:

From page 69:

A short while later Pastor Kurt returned, joined by a young woman with cowgirl jeans and one wet cuff, as if she’d crossed a creek on the way in. She had a long ponytail and was holding an infant wrapped in a blankie.

“Esme,” Pastor Kurt said, “this is my daughter, Grace.”

For a second Esme wasn’t sure whether Grace was the woman or the baby, but then the woman held out her hand.

“I’m Trudy,” she said, “Grace’s mom.” Trudy leaned down so Esme could see Baby Grace. She looked like half Fisher-Price person, half Charlie Brown. “Guess how old she is.”

Esme had no idea. “One?”

“Just ten days old,” Pastor Kurt said, “if you can imagine.”

Now it was making more sense: Pastor Kurt was the one whose wife got cancer a few years ago and died within months.

Trudy must’ve been her replacement.

Esme still didn’t quite know what was going on, but when Trudy rested Grace into the crook of Esme’s arm, something stirred within her. As Trudy and Pastor Kurt looked for books, Esme held the infant for a half hour, until the front of her Froot Loops T-shirt held a sweaty blob in the shape of a sleeping baby.

“I knew she’d cheer you up,” Pastor Kurt said.

“When Grace gets a little older,” Trudy said, “you can babysit.”

Esme was so excited by the prospect that the second they left she returned to her table, shoved her face in a book and cried so hard that she forgot all about her dead dad and the stolen Volume J.

Any reader who flipped to this page would glimpse one of the most pivotal moments in this book: a young girl named Esme, finding refuge in her small town library, has just discovered a secret about her dead father and the encyclopedia he once gifted her; in the same scene, she is invited to babysit for a family who will come to define her very existence. Although it is much “quieter” than other scenes, and it is in a child’s POV, this moment acts as a keystone within the arc of the plot—one that leads directly into the core mystery of the book.

What I find astonishing about this is that readers wouldn’t know how pivotal this brief scene is until they reached the final chapters, over 300 pages later. This is the dilemma of discussing mystery novels—spoilers!—so I won’t ruin it by analyzing this scene any more deeply. But I would encourage readers to page back to 69 after finishing the book, once they know the outcome!

This short scene reveals something unconventional in the novel’s larger structure, as well. In the opening chapter, our protagonist—a woman named Abigail, who is a newcomer to this remote, haunted town—sees a boy running through the sagebrush and soon discovers that his mother—a single mom named Esme—has been murdered and left in an Oldsmobile in the desert. On the one hand, this is the story of Abigail as she solves Esme’s murder and, simultaneously, gets to know this creepy, colorful town. But it was equally important to me to tell Esme’s story, from the time she’s a little girl—visiting the library, for example, which is where she is in the scene above—until the night of her death. The novel alternates between these two women’s stories. My goal here was to give Esme—the victim—a full sense of humanity. From the opening pages we know she is dead, yet we are asked to trace her life from beginning to end, to see it for its beauty and its struggles, to get to know her and feel empathy for her as readers. The goal here is to grant her a whole life on the page rather than treat her as a plot device or a “body in the library,” which is sometimes how victims are seen in the genre, especially in traditional mysteries.

Visit Matthew Sullivan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore.

--Marshal Zeringue