"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

"Dark Rising"

Andrews & Wilson is a New York Times best-selling coauthor team of multiple covert ops and action-adventure thriller series: Tier One, Sons of Valor, The Shepherds and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan saga. Brian Andrews is a US Navy veteran, Park Leadership Fellow, and former submarine officer with a psychology degree from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s degree in business from Cornell University. He is a principal contributor at Career Authors, a site dedicated to advancing the careers of aspiring and published writers. Jeffrey Wilson has worked as an actor, firefighter, paramedic, jet pilot, and diving instructor, as well as a vascular and trauma surgeon. He served in the US Navy for fourteen years and made multiple deployments as a combat surgeon with an East Coast–based SEAL Team. He and his wife, Wendy, live in Southwest Florida with their four children.

They applied the Page 69 Test to the fourth installment of their Shepherds Series, Dark Rising, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Anyone else hurt? And you said you’re not hurt, correct?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Jed said. “But I’d sure like to get out of here sooner rather than later, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, of course,” Ben said. “I’ll reach out to our connections at State and also, you know, other agencies. I’ll get you out as quickly as I can. But it might take a minute, okay? Not a lot going on down there right now that our connections would be involved with, so . . .”

“What about our people?” Jed asked. “Do we have any . . . um . . . business dealings down here?”

Ben chewed his lip. This might not be a Shepherd situation—time would tell—but either way he could certainly get people there to help a brother. The problem was, the Shepherds didn’t have a formal base of operations in the area. Ben knew of assets in DR that he could call—but maybe not the kind of direct-action team Jed was looking for.

It would take time to connect with them. They weren’t “organic” to the organization, but operated more like managed assets and were undercover in an NOC. The Shepherds had never really needed a major presence in the DR.

Or at least not before Jed vacationed there . . .

“Sit tight, Jed,” he said. “We’ll get you out of there as quick as we can, but just be prepared to spend at least a few hours there—maybe even overnight.”

“Oh, lovely . . .”

“I’ll make clear that you’re not a criminal and not to be screwed with, then I’ll get a call in right away. Lay low, get along, and I’ll have you out as soon as I can. Once you’re secure, we can talk more. And I’ll send you contact information on some . . . connections we have in country,” Ben added, already searching for the contact information for the husband-and-wife team who worked as assets for the Shepherds in the DR.

Page 69 delves into a pivotal moment between Jed Johnson, a seasoned Navy SEAL and leader of the Joshua Bravo team at the Shepherds, and his boss and friend, Ben Morvant. Following a harrowing and unexpected violent encounter with someone he suspects of being part of an evil organization they had believed to be in chaos, Jed finds himself in a precarious situation—sitting a jail cell accused of murder. There’s palpable tension as Jed recounts the dangers he's faced as best he can on the open line. He’s alone in a foreign country where he was supposed to be on vacation, with no back or resources and a possible new threat. Their conversation also reveals deeper stakes-- The Shepherds, an elite team committed to combating spiritual and physical threats, are grappling with the rise of the Dark Ones—a sinister force orchestrating a new Rising after Jed and his team were able to rescue the watchers at St. Georges and defeat Victor, the demon possessed head of the Dark Ones. This scene sets the stage and the stakes—as well as the uncertainty—for the new mission ahead for Jed and his Special Missions Unit from the Shepherds. Jed is sure that innocent children are disappearing, and that it is this new rising evil behind the kidnappings. It’s time to regroup and strategize their next move in the unending battle against evil.

Visit the Andrew and Wilson website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Vanishing Kind"

In addition to being a writer, Alice Henderson is a dedicated wildlife researcher, geographic information systems specialist, and bioacoustician. She documents wildlife on specialized recording equipment, checks remote cameras, creates maps, and undertakes wildlife surveys to determine what species are present on preserves, while ensuring there are no signs of poaching. She’s surveyed for the presence of grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, jaguars, endangered bats, and more.

Henderson applied the Page 69 Test to her latest Alex Carter mystery thriller, The Vanishing Kind, and reported the following:

On page 69 of The Vanishing Kind, my protagonist Alex Carter, a wildlife biologist, has just helped drive off a dangerous group of anti-immigrant vigilantes from an archaeological dig site. The police have responded and she's giving her account of what happened. She hopes they'll be able to track down the dangerous men. In the meantime, after checking on the archaeology team and saying her goodbyes, she heads back into the wilderness of the New Mexico wildlife sanctuary where she's been tasked with locating elusive jaguars.

I think page 69 would give readers an excellent idea of the whole work. It hints to the action that has just preceded the scene, and shows Alex as a caring, brave person who will stand up to injustice. It also describes the sanctuary where she's at work, giving readers a sense of the nature that suffuses the book:

Then she continued on, hiking through a juniper forest and climbing up to the top of a steep plateau. A space between the trunks of Mexican piñon pines allowed her a glimpse at the dry valleys below. She pulled at the collar of her T-shirt, fanning it, inviting a breeze. The heat clung to her, pressing in on her.

This depiction of nature that carries throughout the book is very important to me, as I want to share my love of wilderness with readers, and even inspire them to get outside to our amazing natural spaces.

Visit Alice Henderson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Not Dead Yet"

Jeffrey Siger is an American living on the Aegean Greek island of Mykonos. A former Wall Street lawyer, he gave up his career as a name partner in his own New York City law firm to write the international best-selling, award recognized Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series of mystery thrillers telling more than just a fast-paced story. The New York Times described his novels as “thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales” and named him as Greece’s thriller novelist of record.

Siger applied the Page 69 Test to his latest Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery thriller, Not Dead Yet, and reported the following:

Here is page 69:

“Yes, why should you?” She giggled again.

Andreas exhaled. “Okay, so what did he have to tell you relevant to the crash?”

Lila took a sip of wine. “He’s gone over all the documents provided to him by my company and asked the AAIASB for additional documents. So far, all the maintenance records and logs he reviewed show nothing out of the ordinary and everything to be in working order. But unless the black boxes are found, we may never definitively know what happened.”

“How about a non-definitive opinion or even a wild-ass guess on what brought down the plane and how Onofrio managed to be the only one who survived?”

“According to Niko, every crash is unique in its own way. In this case, it’s the rarity of not one, but at least two passengers surviving a high velocity impact at sea.”

“Two?”

“Yes,” nodded Lila. “Presumably an autopsy will determine that Onofrio’s wife was alive after the crash, and with the bodies of the four other known occupants still unaccounted for, he can’t rule out more survived for at least some period after the crash.”

“That seems hard to believe.”

“I had the same reaction. He said some years back, a commercial jetliner flying empty except for a crew of four—two pilots and two flight attendants––were on a mission to rescue a hundred fisherman stranded in a remote Alaskan village. Three of the crew sat in the cockpit, while one flight attendant sat in the back of the plane reading. Descending through thick fog on what the pilots mistakenly thought the correct flight path for landing on a rural airstrip, the plane crashed into a sloping hillside miles before the runway. The careening impact ripped off the tail section, including the last two rows of seats, as the fuselage continued tearing across the hillside to a stop. Miraculously all survived, including the flight attendant who’d been sitting in one of the last two rows torn off the plane along with the tail section. When the three from the cockpit found their crew mate, she was injured, but alive; still strapped into her seat sitting off by itself away from the remains of the rest of the plane.”

Andreas shook his head. “I’d call that crazy luck or a downright miracle.”

In all the years I’ve taken the Page 69 Test, never before has that bellwether test so perfectly captured my book’s central plot elements as it does when applied to Not Dead Yet, my 14th Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery-thriller.

The page begins with a conversation between Andreas and his wife, Lila, regarding the details of an unofficial investigation into the crash of a private jet resulting in the apparent deaths of all onboard but Dimitris Onofrio, a powerful, influential and ruthlessly corrupt mega-rich Greek businessman. Paranoid and vengeful to the core, one dares not offend Onofrio and witnesses prepared to testify against him mysteriously die before they have the chance to do so.

Onofrio’s wife is thought to have died from the crash, and though Onofrio now lies comatose in a hospital room, Kaldis has no doubt that once conscious he’ll seek vengeance against anyone he suspects responsible for the death of his beloved wife. Chief among those suspects is Andreas’ own wife who’s more mixed up in the accident than Andreas ever suspected.

At the heart of Not Dead Yet is an ex officio effort on the part of Andreas and his team to determine what caused the crash, how Onofrio’s wife died, and who was responsible––before Onofrio awakes and begins seeking his revenge. All of those plot points are at play on page 69.

All that’s missing is the role glorious Greece plays in all my books. Here’s a bit of that.

Set largely along Greece’s southwestern Peloponnesian coastline with the Ionian Sea, the plot moves north from where Greek mythology places the entrance to Hades, to search for clues along the coastal perimeter of the historically and agriculturally rich Messinian Bay region. From there it’s on to Navarino where Greeks fought the most important sea battle of their 1821 War for Independence and today is home to Costa Navarino, one of the world’s most luxurious and celebrated golf resorts.

Visit Jeffrey Siger's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Mykonos.

The Page 69 Test: Prey on Patmos.

The Page 69 Test: Target Tinos.

The Page 69 Test: Mykonos After Midnight.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Twist.

Q&A with Jeffrey Siger.

The Page 69 Test: At Any Cost.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Silver and Smoke"

Van Hoang is the author of Girl Giant and the Monkey King, Girl Giant and the Jade War, and the forthcoming Auntie Q's Golden Claws Nail Salon for middle grade readers. Her adult debut novel is The Monstrous Misses Mai; Silver and Smoke is her new novel. Hoang earned her bachelor’s in English at the University of New Mexico and her master’s in library information science at San Jose State University. She was born in Vietnam, grew in up Orange County, California, and now resides in Los Angeles with her family.

Hoang applied the Page 69 Test to Silver and Smoke and reported the following:

From page 69:

Issa was so sick, she hardly remembered the return trip from Catalina.

Only that Olivia took care of everything, buying their fares, making sure they got to the right dock, and guiding her onto the ferry and then onto the streetcar, where Issa shut her eyes and endured the clanky ride. She finally collapsed onto their bed at home, where she slept for what felt like weeks. She recalled vague images, blurry along the edges, of Ma and Olivia checking on her, and even though she felt horrible, she was glad to have an excuse not to join Ma at the hotel to fold laundry for a few extra dollars.

When she finally felt well enough to get out of bed one afternoon, Ma was already at work, and Olivia was reading a newspaper in the kitchen. A pot of some savory-smelling broth gave off steam on the stovetop.

"You're alive," Olivia said with an exaggerated sigh. "I was begin-ning to worry."

"I don't feel alive," Issa said. Her stomach growled loudly.

"That's a good sign," Olivia said, setting a bowl in front of Issa. She waited for Issa to take several sips before giving her that smile that meant she had a plan.

"What is it?" Issa asked.

"How do you feel, first. Are you well enough?"

"Well enough for what?"

Olivia leaned forward and grabbed Issa's hands. "For our screen test."

Did it pass the test?

This excerpt is from a scene right after Issa and Olivia do something quite daring by crashing a party in hopes of getting an audition, the first step to achieving their dreams of becoming a movie star. The passage does an excellent job portraying Issa and Olivia's "before" life as they're about to change everything and pursue their dreams and ambitions. I think it gives a glimpse into who they are as regular people--just hard workers, willing to do anything to change their circumstances. It also shows the friendship between Issa and Olivia and how well they take care of each other, as well as those they care about, including Issa's mother. I think it ends on a perfect cliff-hanger as well!

Visit Van Hoang's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Monstrous Misses Mai.

--Marshal Zeringue

"No Precious Truth"

Chris Nickson is the author of eleven Tom Harper mysteries, eight highly acclaimed novels in the Richard Nottingham series, and seven Simon Westow mysteries. He is also a well-known music journalist. He lives in his beloved Leeds.

Nickson's new novel, No Precious Truth, is the first title in a brand-new WWII historical thriller series introducing Sergeant Cathy Marsden – a female police officer working for the Special Investigation Branch – who risks her life to protect the city of Leeds from an escaped German spy!

Nickson applied the Page 69 Test to No Precious Truth and reported the following:

Does page 69 of No Precious Truth tell us much about the book?

It does, because it contains an important break for the Leeds squad of the Special Investigation Branch in their hunt for Jan Minuit, an escaped German spy in 1941.

After a nightclub raid, Sergeant Cathy Marsden, a female police officer second to the SIB, is questioning the female employees who’ve been brought in, and one of them reveals something important:

Finally Cathy passed her the photograph of Minuit.

‘What about him, Evelyn? Has he been around at all?’

Evelyn stared at it for a long time. ‘Someone who looked like him. I think it was Tuesday night. As soon as he came in, Mr Rawlings took him into the back.’

Cathy felt goose pimples rise along her arms, pulse beating faster.

‘How sure are you?’ She tried to tamp down the urgency in her voice.

‘He looked like that picture. Nice-looking bloke. Big.’ That sounded like a match.

‘What was he wearing?’

‘A suit.’ The girl thought, then blinked. ‘I remember I was surprised he didn’t have a coat or hat because it was perishing out.’

‘Did you see him again?’

She shook her head. ‘Never thought about it. People came in and I was busy. Why, who is he?’

‘Someone we want to find.’

They had a real sniff of him now, beyond any doubt.

‘You’re a minor,’ Cathy said as she finished. ‘Under twenty-one. I can’t just let you go. Do you live with your parents?’

A nod. ‘Me mam. Worse bloody luck.’

‘I’ll have someone escort you home.’

It pushes the plot along, a real sign that Minuit is in Leeds, and it offers and insight into Cathy, the sharp question and observation, drawing Evelyn out. While it doesn’t reveal everything, it offers a glimpse and starts to draws the reader into the wartime world of No Precious Truth.

Visit Chris Nickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Psalm.

Q&A with Chris Nickson.

The Page 69 Test: The Molten City.

My Book, The Movie: Molten City.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (August 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Them Without Pain.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Chris Nickson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The California Dreamers"

Amy Mason Doan is the bestselling author of The Summer List, Summer Hours, Lady Sunshine, and The California Dreamers. She earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MA in journalism from Stanford University, and has written for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes, among other publications. She grew up in Danville, California, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The California Dreamers and reported the following:

Page 69 of The California Dreamers distills my novel’s plot and tension into one page quite nicely! The book is about Ronan, the only girl growing up in a surf-van family on the West Coast in the 80s. She leaves their off- the-grid lifestyle for mysterious reasons at 17, but then 15 years later, she reunites with her three brothers and her mother for her father’s memorial service on an island.

On page 69, we’re on a beach near San Diego in the past thread of the story:

The twins and I decide not to tell Cap about the photographer. He only got Charlie close up, really, and now he’s gone. And we don’t want anything to spoil Charlie and Bass’s last night.

Since the Merrick family is fiercely private, their father, Cap, forbids photographs of them. He’s been known to throw cameras in the water or rip film out, ruining it. But today a new friend about Ronan’s age, Charlie, horsed around in front of a photographer on the beach, attracting attention. The family is allowed to socialize with Charlie because her father is a fellow vanner that they trust, but she doesn’t know their rules...and the siblings have broken a huge one in not telling their father what happened earlier on the beach.

When a photograph of the family “goes viral,” to use today’s term, it threatens their way of life. But nobody knows who the photographer is. Was it the one from this day? Or someone else entirely?

It’s one of the central mysteries of the book.

The photograph also brings the family together at the end. But in this early scene, where the siblings are young teens and they don’t know what life has in store for them, they’d never envision that a single photograph could so upend their lives and also provide healing – if they’ll let it.

The next paragraph captures the joy of their life, their attachment to nature and ethos of living simply, and the special thrill of having two guests for their dinner on the beach:

Mama and I make abalone stew, and potatoes with wild rosemary we picked this morning, zucchini pancakes, towers of them, plums, spiced walnuts, and our big glass jug of sun tea, which we’ve been tending to all day, moving it around the road like a sundial so it never felt shade. With a sweet laugh at herself, Mama adds sprigs of mint to each cup.

She likes company as much as being alone, I think.

At least this company. At least once in a while...

Here we get a good sense of Mama’s character – secretive, floaty, withholding – and also of our protagonist’s. Ronan, or Ro, tries to figure people out. She’s softhearted, clever, and passionate. Cameras are forbidden, but she takes mental pictures whenever she can, and her observations are shrewd even if she’s had no formal education and her world is small.

The Page 69 Test works perfectly in this case...but of course I hope people will read the entire book!

Visit Amy Mason Doan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Summer Hours.

My Book, The Movie: Lady Sunshine.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Red Clay"

Charles B. Fancher is a writer and editor, and a former senior corporate communications executive for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He also worked as a journalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Detroit Free Press, and WSM-TV, as well as a publicist for the ABC Television Network. Fancher was previously a member of the School of Communications faculty at Howard University and the adjunct faculty at Temple University. He lives in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.

Fancher applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Red Clay, and reported the following:

Early in Red Clay, John Robert Parker, a southern Alabama plantation owner, believing the Confederacy will lose the Civil War, concocts a scheme to save his fortune, which results in his death and makes Felix, an enslaved boy, the keeper of a powerful secret that, if revealed, could destroy the Parker family and endanger Felix’s family as well.

On page 69, Marie Louise Parker, John Robert’s widow, is coming to grips with what the future holds now that her husband is dead. What lies ahead for her daughter and two sons as the Civil War grinds to an end? She is fearful that the boys will be drafted as cannon fodder in a futile last effort to thwart inevitable defeat, and she is worried that even if they survive, the older son’s personality and interests are ill-suited for life in the agrarian South.

Although the Page 69 Test is a questionable fit for Red Clay, it nevertheless might lead a browser to buy it for three reasons: 1) it sets up a pivotal moment in one of the novel’s key plot turns; 2) it demonstrates the complexity and insightfulness of one of the main characters; and 3) it provides a browser with a feeling for the book’s style and pacing.

A strength of Red Clay, as a work of historical fiction, is that it uses complex interpersonal relationships, often asymmetrical, to provide readers with insights into a formative period that spans the final months of the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, and the arrival of Jim Crow through two very different lenses—that of the white planters and bourgeoisie on one side, and that of the Black formerly enslaved on the other—as they try to understand their lives in a world in which all of the old rules have changed. It is a complicated, dangerous, and loving story of a period that helps to explain who we, as Americans, are today.

Visit Charles B. Fancher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Villages"

Novelist, screenwriter and playwright Robert Inman is a native of Elba, Alabama where he began his writing career in junior high school with his hometown weekly newspaper. He left a 31-year career in television journalism in 1996 to devote full time to creative writing.

Inman applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Villages, and reported the following:

I’m on page 69 of my new novel, Villages, and I’m frankly stunned at how straight it goes to the heart of the book.

Villages is the story of 21-year-old Jonas Boulware, who has reluctantly returned to his small hometown, wounded in body and spirit from combat in the Middle East. He is living temporarily with Doctor Frank Ainsley, a friend and mentor since his childhood. Jonas is by nature a caregiver, compelled to minister to the needs of people around him. That’s why he joined the Navy after high school and became a hospital corpsman (medic). He was the “Doc” for a Marine combat platoon, and saved lives during an attack while almost losing his own.

Doc Ainsley knows Jonas better than just about anyone, including Jonas’s own parents. On page 69, he and Jonas are talking about failure. In being a medic to those Marines, Jonas kept some alive, but lost others, and the losing cuts right to his soul as a caregiver. Doc knows the territory, because – like anyone who treats patients – he can’t save everybody.

Doc says:

“Jonas, you are one of the kindest, most compassionate people I have ever known. Unheard of in a person your age. You love people in the finest sense of the word. You want to make everything right for everybody, even when you know you can’t, and you try your damndest even when it wrenches your guts out. For God’s sake, don’t ever lose that. It’s the curse people like you and me to care, and to keep trying when we fail because we care. But you have to reconcile, Jonas, reconcile yourself to failure. Do all humanly possible, then let it go. If you can’t do that, you either quit or go mad.”

Jonas is trying mightily to keep the ghosts of his war experience at bay, but nightmares and flashbacks keep intruding. Still, he can’t stop trying to be a caregiver, because it goes to the very core of his being.

In caring and giving, and with the help of friends like Doc Ainsley and an unorthodox counselor, he begins to face his trauma, reconcile with failure, and see a glimmer of hope that he can come to grips with his new normal.

Visit Robert Inman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue