"Blood Atonement"

Dan Waddell has published ten non-fiction books. He lives in west London with his son.

He applied the Page 69 Test to Blood Atonement, his second novel featuring genealogist Nigel Barnes (following The Blood Detective), and reported the following:

I laughed when I heard about the page 69 test. Reminded me of my stepbrother who applies the 35 test, but for rather less literary reasons. When he orders Indian or Chinese food takeaway, he goes blind - asks for number 35 and sees what turns up. His theory is that it's always more than edible. But then, he's pushing 270 pounds...

The smile faded when I looked at page 69. There is this passage, spoken by my detective:

'Let's just say there's a chance, an outside chance, that the person who killed her and abducted her daughter is some kind of distant relation. So if possible, we need to know anyone who might be alive today who shared a common maternal ancestor.'

The first sentence effectively suggests the premise of the whole book. The second introduces my book's point of difference - the use of genealogy in solving the crime. It is also one of the few pages in the book when my main three protagonists - genealogist Nigel Barnes, his sometimes squeeze DS Heather Jenkins and the brusque detective Grant Foster - are featured at the same time. Hell, the page even hints at the use of genetic genealogy to help solve the mystery, a fascinating area I hope to explore further in future books.

I'd say page 69 is more than edible.

Read an excerpt from Blood Atonement, and learn more about the book and author at Dan Waddell's website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fan Mail"

PD Martin is the author of four novels featuring Aussie FBI profiler Sophie Anderson.

She applied the Page 69 Test to the mass market edition of Fan Mail, now available in the US, and reported the following:

In Fan Mail, Sophie is working a case where fiction has become fatal. A popular crime writer is murdered and posed just like the crime scene in the dead author’s last book. Death is imitating art, but who’s pulling the strings?

Page 69 is a pretty good representation of the book, because it heralds the arrival of my main character, Aussie FBI profiler Sophie Anderson, at the crime scene. This is how p.69, and chapter 4, starts:

"There’s more than the usual crime-scene circus outside Black’s house. The road, sidewalk and nearby driveways are littered with cars and media vans. There’s always press, but not like this…"

However, you don’t get a sample of one of the things I enjoyed most about writing Fan Mail, and that’s the short snippets of the fictional authors’ works. This gave me a chance to write in a completely different style, voice and character, within the framework of a Sophie book. Which was a lot of fun!

Fan Mail is the third book featuring Sophie – an ex-police officer from Australia who now works for the FBI as a profiler. She also experiences nightmares and waking flashes about her cases that often come true.

I’d describe all my books – Body Count, The Murderers’ Club and Fan Mail – as fast-paced police/FBI procedurals with lots of forensic and criminal psychology details, plus an Aussie perspective on the US.

Read an excerpt from Fan Mail, and learn more about the book and author at P. D. Martin's website, blog, and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: The Murderers' Club.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Elfland"

Freda Warrington is the author of eighteen fantasy novels, including A Blackbird in Silver Darkness, A Taste of Blood Wine and Dracula the Undead.

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

Elfland is a contemporary fantasy, the first of my ‘Aetherial Tales’ series for Tor. The title is tongue-in-cheek, because it isn’t strictly about Elfland as such! I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of glamorous creatures who appear human but aren’t; angels, demons, elves, vampires, demi-gods, what you will. My Aetherials (or Aelyr) evolved as my interpretation of such a race.

Their story, rooted in the everyday world, shows the entanglements of two contrasting households; Oakholme, a friendly, beamed house inhabited by a loving family, the Foxes, and Stonegate Manor, the forbidding mansion on the hill containing a broken family, the Wilders.

These particular Aetherials live in an English village where the Great Gates to the Otherworld are concealed. Although they pass for human, they have secrets… that they can wander into other realities, transform into different, disturbing forms… and that the sinister gatekeeper, Lawrence Wilder, has controversially barred the Great Gates, denying them access to their home realms.

At its heart, Elfland is a story about the anguish of unrequited love.

Against this background, Rosie Fox is growing to adulthood and trying to work out who she truly is. Flipping to page 69, I find Rosie, aged 14, at a pivotal moment indeed – trying to initiate tongue-tied conversation with a young god! In the previous chapter, attending a party at Stonegate Manor, she witnesses a secret gathering of Aetherials – including her parents – angrily confronting Lawrence Wilder about his barring of the Gates. While Lawrence defends himself, warning of dark, undefined menace, Rosie is captivated by his son, Jon. She’s fallen in love.

Some days later, as Rosie confides in school-friends, Jon and his brother Sam appear unexpectedly at the school…

Jonathan and Samuel Wilder were prowling across the quad, wary and predatory like two dark panthers unleashed from a cage. They were wearing the school uniform; black trousers and jacket, white shirt, black and silver striped tie. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

Mel laughed. ‘Close your mouth, Ro, you’re drooling icicles.’

Rosie’s teeth began to hurt with the cold. She snapped her mouth shut and accidentally bit her tongue, causing her eyes to fill with water.

The bell sounded and chilled students began to stream towards the school building. Jon and Sam vanished in the flow for a moment. When they reappeared, Sam had moved off with a group of sixth form boys and Jon was on his own, walking straight towards her.

Her pulse quickened. Their eyes met, disengaged, met again. He paused as if not sure what to do. Mel poked her in the hip and the next thing she knew, she was on her feet in front of him.

His long hair was tied back and he looked more beautiful than she remembered; perfect face, dark long-lashed eyes, sensual mouth. Her heartbeat shook her whole body as he approached. She’d thought falling in love would be wonderful; no one had warned her it could be painfully mortifying. Her watering eyes made her nose run, while her mouth was glued shut.

Jon wore a slightly startled, do-I-know-you expression, which she hadn’t expected. This seemed a good moment for a chasm to open beneath her.

‘Hi, I’m Rosie.’

He gave a small frown. ‘Rosie…?’

‘We live down the hill from you.’ Her tongue felt clumsy. ‘We met at the party, do you remember?’

‘Er… yes, you’re really familiar,’ he said, still looking blank.

How could he not remember, when she’d obsessed about him ever since? Her fingers described a muzzle in front of her face. ‘In the fox mask.’

‘Oh yes, yes.’ Light dawned at last. ‘Rosie Fox. Course.’

‘That’s it,’ she laughed in relief. ‘My father knows yours… anyway… I really liked your poem.’

‘I didn’t write it. It was The Song of Amergin.’

‘Er, I know, I meant the way you performed it.’

‘Thanks.’ His gaze drifted away from her – scanning for Sam, she assumed. He wasn’t making this easy at all.

‘I thought you were at boarding school,’ she struggled on. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Uh,’ Jon said, and looked at his feet. ‘We were. Dad decided to take us out and send us here instead.’

‘Oh,’ she said, and thought it extraordinary that Lawrence actually might have listened to her father’s throwaway advice. ‘Do you mind?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ The sweetness of his face and the fall of his hair were playing havoc with her insides. He caught her gaze with those melting brown eyes as if he wanted to confide something vital, and would if she could only win his trust.

‘What subjects do you like best?’

‘Um… English is okay, and biology… I’d better go.’ He started to turn from her, hands in pockets, head down. A sudden small flame of courage lit inside her and, on an impulse, she stepped after him.

‘Jon, could I ask you a favor?’

He stopped, met her eyes again with a wary frown. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Your brother Sam has something of mine.’

‘What?’

‘Ask him,’ she said more confidently. ‘He’ll know what it is. It’s not much, but it’s important to me. Could you get it from him, and bring it round to my house? Please? When you’ve got time.’

He looked perplexed, then gave a quick smile that lit up his face. Her heart sprang like an elated lamb. ‘Yes, okay. No problem. See you later.’

The story moves from adolescent angst to darker, more adult territory, but here we see Rosie on the threshold of womanhood – falling in love for the first time, but is it with the right person? Entangled in the mysteries surrounding Lawrence Wilder, she’s torn between being human and being Aetherial. As a result, she will make a disastrous choice that leads to tragedy…

In a sense, Elfland is a coming-of-age novel, about making mistakes by trying to do things that seem to be expected of you by other people, instead of being true to your authentic self. Almost nothing Rosie believes turns out to be true.

Anyway, if page 69 isn’t your cup of tea, just wait until you get to page 258!

Learn more about the author and her work at Freda Warrington's website and blog.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Meridian"

A celebrated speaker and teacher, Amber Kizer gives writing workshops for all ages.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new YA novel, Meridian, and reported the following:

Meridian is a girl who has been surrounded by death her entire life but has no idea why. Her mother has kept a huge secret from her. On her 16th birthday Meridian's world falls apart and she begins the journey to learn her truth, her destiny, and her ancestry as a Fenestra.

Fenestras are windows to the afterlife--they shepherd dying souls. Page 69 falls at the end of a chapter, is only a couple short paragraphs. Something quite pivotal is about to happen, but readers have to turn the page to find out. I think perhaps the only part of that page that is indicative of the rest of the story is the suspense and the compulsion to continue reading.

As to whether readers who only read page 69 would read the rest of the book--that's up to them! Reading is subjective and interactive with what readers bring to the table. However, I would hope that readers picking one page to judge would start with the first page of a story as it's intended--if I wanted readers to start the story at page 69 I would have cut out the first 68 pages of the book in the first place!

Read excerpts from Meridian, and learn more about the book and author at the Meridian website and Amber Kizer's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico"

Sarah McCoy graduated from Virginia Tech with a BA in journalism and public relations and Old Dominion University with an MFA in creative writing fiction. She has taught writing at Old Dominion University and the University of Texas at El Paso.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico, her debut novel, and reported the following:

Cue the finger-wagging: Page 69 of The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico catches the protagonist, 11-year-old Verdita, in the midst of shenanigans.

On page 69, Verdita’s Papi walks in while she and her young cousin are stealing sips out of the coquito punch bowl. (Coquito being a Puerto Rican Christmastime coconut rum libation.)

At first glance, I thought, “No, no, this isn’t representative of the book. It makes Verdita seem too naughty.” But upon a closer look, I retracted that statement.

This coquito scene is much more than a young girl disobeying her parents. It captures the essence of coming of age: pushing boundaries, making decisions, and facing their possible consequences. On the cusp of adulthood, didn’t we all do things we knew we shouldn’t? The forbidden is so seductive. It’s a human fundamental. Look at Adam and Eve. In that sense, it absolutely encapsulates one of the novel’s central themes and illustrates the intrinsic conflicts we face growing up.

This page also gives a sense of the types of characters I love to write. Dichotomies: people who are strong but weak, who love and hate, good and evil, both sides of the humanity coin. They ring most true to my head and heart.

Here’s a taste:

“Ay bendito!” She grabbed at her throat, her mouth turned down, and her nose flared. After a moment, she licked her lips. “It’s not bad.”

“Sí,” I said, and out popped a laugh. I covered my mouth and looked to the door. Still no Papi or Mamá. We took three more spoonfuls each; but then Tío Benny stopped singing, and I quickly licked the white off the back of the spoon and slid the plate over the bowl.

Papi came inside with Señor Lopez and some other barrio men.

“Don’t you want to hear the troubadours, Verdita?” He palmed a couple Schlitzes from the fridge and handed them around. The men popped open the tabs and sucked the fizz, their eyes glittering silver, their thumbs beating rhythms against the tin cans.

Papi went to the bowl of coquito. His hand was next to the serving spoon. He stood for a moment. I swallowed my heart and felt the thump-thump in the bony ridge of my throat. The heat of the coquito must have filled up my face. Sweat beaded above my lip and across my forehead.

He took off the plate, dipped his thumb in and sucked it.

“Venusa!” he called.

I closed my eyes. My eyeballs were hot under their lids. I had my defense ready....

Read an excerpt from The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico, and learn more about the book and author at Sarah McCoy’s website and blog.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Inspector Ghote’s First Case"

H. R. F. Keating was the reviewer for the London Times for fifteen years and served as chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors. He has been the longest-serving president of the Detection Club, next only to Agatha Christie. He twice won the CWA Gold Dagger, and in 1996, he was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger. He lives in London with his wife, the actor Sheila Mitchell, who regularly reads his titles as audio books.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Inspector Ghote's First Case, and reported the following:

Page 69 is, of course no more typical, to my mind, of the rest of Inspector Ghote’s First Case than page 68 or page 70. One page may contain many elements, as this does, of the way I try to convey character through dialogue and forward the story through descriptions of place and situation but it can only be a snapshot of the particular moment I have reached in the story. Like all the preceding 25 Ghote titles it is a detective novel with a strong plot line, but it is also a novel that builds a picture of India in the 1960s, post Raj and still young in its Independence and above all it is written about a young policeman on the threshold of his career. Although, since 1964, there has been a whole series about Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay CID this title takes him back to the beginning, to the day when he was still an Assistant Inspector and receives a letter informing him of his promotion to Inspector and appointment to the prestigious Detection of Crime Branch. As rapidly becomes apparent Ghote’s life is never straight forward and he is constantly being asked to make decisions that are fraught with difficulties. His home life with his heavily pregnant young wife, Protima, provides further complications when he sent out of Bombay to the hills of Mahableshwar. By and large P69 contains examples of the Indian English I use frequently and has touches of the old Raj life led by Dawkins Sahib as well as revealing some of Ghote’s anxieties, so it is certainly as typical as many another page of the book as a whole.

Read more about the author and the Inspector Ghote series at H. R. F. Keating's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"How It Ends"

Laura Wiess' books include Such a Pretty Girl and Leftovers.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, How It Ends, and reported the following:

How It Ends explores how love begins, how it ends, how you never really know the dark secrets held in the hearts of those you love, and what happens when you finally do.

The story has two main characters: Hanna, a naïve, hopeful teen who is searching for happily-ever-after in a world that seems wide open and Helen, a beloved, terminally ill neighbor whose world is closing down and who has been lying to protect Hanna her whole life.

On Page 69, Hanna is talking to a friend about a guy she snap-judged on appearance (including the rude tattoo on his arm), and is stunned to discover how much more there is to him than meets the eye:

(I've borrowed the last paragraph from pg. 68 to put it into context.)

And then she said Jesse got it from some hole-in-the-wall place after his mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and almost died, because that was pretty much how he felt about the world.

"When was this?" I said.

"When we were in sixth grade, don't you remember?" Crystal said. "She left in the middle of the semester and took a year's leave of absence because she was so sick. Jesse was what, a freshman or a sophomore?"

"But she made it, right?" I said.

"Yeah, but he thought she was going to die and his dad was totally focused on her and Jesse just kind of got lost trying to deal with it. He started partying way too much and dropped out of school in junior year and got arrested for driving without a license but they went easy on him because of his circumstances-"

"You knew all this and you never told me?" I said.

"Why would you have cared?" she said, amused. "Everybody's got a story behind them, Hanna. You know that. You read."

"Well yeah, but that's fiction. This is like, real."

This is a startling discovery for Hanna - that people can be far more than what she sees - but she's young and doesn't yet realize that this applies to everyone, even Helen, who she loves and trusts implicitly but who she sees as an old, grandmotherly person, and not someone to harbor dark, unsettling secrets.

So while Page 69 is a decent representation of Hanna's voice and mindset it's not of Helen who, knowing she is dying and not wanting to leave Hanna with nothing but shattering lies and unanswered questions, begins her story this way:

"I would not willingly peel back the scar tissue protecting the deepest chambers of my heart and reveal the bruised hollows pooled with the blood of old wounds - the terror comes just thinking about it - but now, facing darkness, I am left with no choice. I love you, and because of that I am going to try and raise the dead."

Read an excerpt from How It Ends, and learn more about the book and author at the official Laura Wiess website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Devil's Trill"

A graduate of Yale, Gerald Elias has been a Boston Symphony violinist, Associate Concertmaster of the Utah Symphony since 1988, Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of Utah, first violinist of the Abramyan String Quartet, and Music Director of the Vivaldi Candlelight concert series.

He applied the “Page 69 Test” to Devil's Trill, his debut novel, and reported the following:

"Why would any of them want to steal the violin?" This is the question Daniel Jacobus, the blind, cantankerous, put-out-to-pasture violinist poses on page 69 to Nathaniel Williams, his side-kick, corpulent, African American once-upon-a-time cellist but now art theft insurance investigator. This single question is the crux of the plot of Devil's Trill, and trying to find the answer not only jeopardizes their lifelong friendship, but gets Jacobus into life-threatening hot water. The damned violin, a unique 3/4 size Stradivarius, has bestowed a curse upon everyone who has ever owned it, starting with Matteo Cherubino, aka "Il Piccolino," the legendary, perhaps mythical 17th century midget violin virtuoso. After the violin is stolen from Carnegie Hall from under the noses of security guards and its Grimsley Violin Competition owners, Jacobus unwittingly becomes both primary suspect and reluctant sleuth. And when the theft is followed in short order by murder, the hot water reaches the boiling point. So much for the staid world of classical music!

Read an excerpt from Devil's Trill, and learn more about the book and author at Gerald Elias' website.

Hear Elias perform Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"In This Way I Was Saved"

Brian DeLeeuw is an editor at Tin House magazine and a contributor to the website ThisRecording.com. He received his BA from Princeton University and his MFA from The New School. He now lives in New York City, where he was born and raised.

DeLeeuw applied the “Page 69 Test” to In This Way I Was Saved, his debut novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 of In This Way I Was Saved is near the end of Part I of the novel, a section in which six year-old Luke Nightingale struggles with an increasingly menacing and assertive imaginary friend named Daniel, who is also the narrator of the novel. A few pages before this, Daniel has tricked Luke into committing a truly awful crime, and Daniel now imagines that he has gained the permanent upper-hand in their fight for control of Luke’s life. But not so fast: Luke’s mother Claire takes her son to see a child psychiatrist, and the tables turn once again:

After three more visits to Dr. Claymore and one month of the new pills—tiny sky-blue tablets, like chalky candy—I was banished to the inside of Luke’s skull. It wasn’t gradual, like my decomposition on Fire Island; it was like a trapdoor unlatched, brutal and abrupt.

The conflict between Luke and Daniel is this novel’s propulsive core; their relationship is a study in destructive codependence, which is complicated by the fact that Daniel may not exist separately from Luke at all, but may instead be an aspect of Luke’s fractured mind. Or maybe not: Daniel’s identity—imaginary friend or malevolent spirit?—is a mystery that Daniel himself is desperate to solve.

After Luke regains some control over Daniel by taking his new medication, he tries here on page 69 a number of methods for containing his troublesome shadow:

First, Luke packaged me in a taped-up cardboard box that sat in the corner of his new bedroom, but after a few days of struggle, I pushed my way out. Then he dragged me behind him wherever he went, my body bound in steel wire, a metal plate screwed over my mouth and a leash clipped to a collar around my neck, my head bumping along the ground as he walked. After the clip broke one day—sending me rolling across the sidewalk and out into the street, coming to a stop just short of the wheels of a city bus—he stuffed me into a narrow blue bottle, some apothecary antique his mother had bought to add character to his bookshelves. Wadded up like a dirty tissue, my face smashed into the mottled glass, I watched his comings and goings through a blue tint, as though submerged underwater, until the glass cracked and then splintered, spraying shards across the floor and freeing me to fall among them.

I think this passage is representative of the way in which the novel handles the interplay between reality and the imagination—the way in which real-world “public” events (such as the taking of Luke’s new medication) have their own separate meaning in Luke and Daniel’s private world (such as the various methods of containment described above). This kind of double meaning is threaded throughout the entire book and is, I hope, one of the unique aspects of the volatile, unstable world I have created for these two (or is it one?) strange characters.

Read an excerpt from In This Way I Was Saved, and learn more about the book and author at Brian DeLeeuw's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Big Machine"

Victor LaValle is the author of the short-story collection Slapboxing with Jesus and the novel The Ecstatic, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

He applied the “Page 69 Test” to his new novel, Big Machine, and reported the following:

“Six months later I barely remembered a time when I didn’t dress in three-piece suits.”

Page 69 in my new novel, Big Machine, is actually the start of a chapter and the sentence above is the first line on the page. I’d say it was pretty representative of the book because the book is about change. Personal change, political change, moral and ethical transformation. A whole bunch of changes occur in and around the two main characters: Ricky Rice and Adele Henry. It’s also about some of the profound changes in present day American culture.

Ricky Rice, your humble narrator throughout most of the book, starts as an ex-heroin addict and petty criminal, a janitor at a bus station in Utica, New York. At work he receives a mysterious envelope with a note and a bus ticket. The ticket takes him to northeastern Vermont and there he joins a secret society called the Washburn Library. By page 69 he’s already been there for six months and he’s changed, both inside and out. The three piece-suit he’s wearing is a gift from the Library, but it’s become a kind of uniform too. He’s no longer that man who cleaned bus stations, but when he’s called up to meet his boss and given a very dangerous assignment he’s faced with a new concern: what kind of man would he like to become?

Read an excerpt from Big Machine and learn more about the book and author at Victor LaValle's website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Magicians"

Lev Grossman is Time magazine's book critic as well as one of its lead technology writers. The New York Times says he's “among this country's smartest and most reliable critics.”

He published his first novel, Warp, in 1997. His second novel, Codex, came out in 2004 and became an international bestseller.

Grossman applied the “Page 69 Test” to his new novel, The Magicians, and reported the following:

Page 69 finds us in Chapter 5 of The Magicians, which is called “Snow.” So far the following things have happened. Our hero Quentin, who is 17 and very unhappy, has been invited to take the entrance exam at a very secret, very exclusive college for magicians -- real magicians, the kind who cast real spells. Being an exceptionally intelligent young man, he passes the exam and matriculates at the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy.

He soon finds that the other 20 students in his class are, like him, very bright and rather eccentric. He also begins to realize that magic works a bit differently from how he expected. It’s a lot harder to do, and its purpose is a lot less clear. There’s no Voldemort to fight. So what’s magic for?

Now, towards the end of his first semester, he’s studying and practicing for his first final exam at Brakebills. It’s the night before the test, and he’s been up for days cramming with two other students, one of whom is a terribly shy girl named Alice. Quentin goes to take a midnight walk in the snow (it’s November, and Brakebills is in upstate New York) to clear his head. To his surprise, Alice asks if she can come with him.

They have an interesting conversation. Quentin discovers, among other things, that Alice wasn’t invited to Brakebills the way he was. She had to find her way in by herself, which you’re not supposed to be able to do -- the school is magically concealed from outsiders:

“They couldn’t believe it,” Alice says. “Nobody’s supposed to be able to find the House by themselves. They thought it was just an accident, but it’s so obvious there’s old magic here, tons of it. This whole place is wild with it -- if you look at it through the right spells, it lights up like a forest fire.

“They must have thought I was a homeless person. I had twigs in my hair. I’d been crying all night. Professor Van der Weghe felt sorry for me. She gave me coffee and let me take the entrance Exam all by myself. Fogg didn’t want to let me, but she made him.”

In some ways this is an atypical page -- it’s a quiet moment in the plot, of which there aren’t all that many. But in other ways it’s actually a very appropriate one to pull out. It’s one of Quentin’s growing-up moments, when he realizes that he’s not the only one who has problems, and that his problems are actually pretty insignificant compared to a lot of other people’s. He changes -- his world suddenly expands, in that way that only happens when you’ve been acting like kind of a self-centered asshole, and you suddenly realizes it, and you know all at once that you’re not going to do that anymore in the future, ever.

Read an excerpt from The Magicians, and learn more about the book and author at Lev Grossman's website and The Magicians website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dead Write"

Like her Forensic Handwriting Mysteries series (Penguin/Obsidian) character, Claudia Rose, Sheila Lowe is a real-life court-qualified handwriting expert who testifies in handwriting-related cases. She's a frequent guest in the media when there are interesting handwritings to comment on, such as a recent Dateline NBC, discussing the Clark Rockefeller case. She is also the author of the bestselling Complete Idiot's Guide to Handwriting Analysis, and Handwriting of the Famous & Infamous, as well as the award-winning Sheila Lowe's Handwriting Analyzer software.

She applied the “Page 69 Test” to Dead Write, the new Claudia Rose mystery, and reported the following:

I'd never heard of the Page 69 test, but turning to page 69 of Dead Write was an eye-opening exercise. There, revealed, was the truth about handwriting expert Claudia Rose's assignment in New York. It's an unsettling revelation that makes Claudia want to turn around and head back to the West Coast on the next flight out.

Her new client, Baroness Grusha Olinetsky, a high-priced matchmaker, has brought Claudia to the Big Apple, claiming that her previous handwriting expert made some serious mistakes. What Olinetsky failed to reveal was that those mistakes had led to the unfortunate deaths of several of her clients. On page 69, Claudia begins to uncover information that reveals the far more serious implications of those deaths. It suddenly becomes clear to her that there's a darker motive behind her client's urgent desire to get her on a plane.

Struggling with her own demons, which include dealing with the recent violent death of a friend (in Written in Blood), Claudia isn't interested in getting involved in another sinister situation. But then her personal life intrudes and changes her outlook.

Dead Write, page 69:

As she skimmed through photos that had been shot at a charity fund-raiser the year before, her gaze caught on another familiar figure at the black tie event: Grusha Olinetsky, recognizable, despite platinum blonde hair, rather than her current jet black, but twisted into the same French roll she still favored.

Pear-shaped diamonds dangled from her ears and glittered across her throat. A clingy gold lamé strapless gown showed off pale shoulders. Grusha's gloved arm was tucked possessively through Bernard's and his hand covered hers.

Claudia clicked the back button and paged through some of the other links without finding anything of interest. What she had discovered about Ryan Turner and Shellee Jones left her with the almost certain knowledge that she had been duped into coming here. She went and poured herself a glass of tap water from the bathroom faucet and downed a vitamin.

What game is Grusha playing with me?

It was a question Claudia intended to ask her client. But first, she would keep the appointments that Sonya had made for her with the club's doctors. She would glean whatever information she could arm herself with before the inevitable confrontation with Grusha Olinetsky.

Returning to the laptop, she tried one last search, this time on John Shaw, whose file was the last in the pile. But even with the additional demographics she entered, the name was too common to bring up anything useful.

Maybe no news is good news for him, she thought, contemplating the array of perplexing information she had accumulated so far:

Ten fancy leather file folders, three dead clients.

Read an excerpt from Dead Write, and learn more about the book and author at the Claudia Rose Forensic Handwriting Mysteries series website.

My Book, The Movie: Sheila Lowe's Written in Blood and Poison Pen.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue