"Something Evil Comes"

A.J. Cross, like her heroine Kate Hanson, is a Forensic Psychologist with over twenty years' experience in the field. She lives in Birmingham with her jazz-musician husband.

Cross applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Something Evil Comes, and reported the following:

I’ve heard of this test and I’ve taken a look at page 69 of Something Evil Comes to see if it is representative of the whole book.  It goes without saying that I would like for any reader skimming the page to read on. On initial consideration of the page I didn’t see that representative element. That is, until I thought about it.

This particular page focuses on the three main characters who work in the Unsolved Crime Unit.  They are discussing an interview with one of a duo of night time, would-be thieves who break into the locked crypt of a church.  The sole feature inside it is a stone sarcophagus. Hoping for valuables, they move its heavy wooden lid aside and light candles they brought to the scene. They are confronted by the fairly well preserved body of a young man whose throat has been ripped out.  He has been identified as twenty-year-old Matthew Flynn, son of one of Birmingham’s leading business entrepreneurs who disappeared a year before. The thieves flee from the crypt but one of them is apprehended shortly afterwards. Bernard Watts, the senior officer in the Unsolved Crime Unit is now conducting the initial interview with him. When the thief’s legal representative requests time alone with her client, Watts joins forensic psychologist Kate Hanson who had been observing the interview from another room, and his other colleague Lieutenant Joseph Corrigan, on secondment from the US as an armed response trainer and third member of the Unsolved Crime Unit. They discuss the information the thief has volunteered thus far and in particular his failure so far to mention the body.

Watts now returns to the interview, ready to challenge the meagre account he has been given. Having had time alone with his lawyer, the thief has had time to reconsider and is now ready to make some very limited admissions to Watts:

‘Yes, I went into that place and yes, I was looking for stuff to nick but there was nothing there so I left.’

‘Is that a fact? Short visit was it?’

‘Yeah, in and out, ten seconds tops.’

Watts sat back, thick arms folded. ‘Let’s think about that, shall we?’

‘My client has given you an admission that he broke in-.’

‘Ten seconds to get inside, walk about a bit, light some candles, have a proper look around.’ He shook his head. ‘Sounds like a few good minutes to me.’

Chivers was flustered now. ‘No ... Yeah, well it might have been a minute or two but that’s all.’

‘What about the lid?’

Chivers’ eyes darted to his solicitor. ‘What lid? I don’t know anything about no lid.’

As a forensic psychologist I’m aware of the skills needed by police officers to obtain the maximum information possible from those who are equally determined to give as little as possible of a self-incriminating nature. An added pressure is that all of these to-and-fro exchanges are closely regulated and time-constrained in the interests of fairness and justice to all.

Page 69 of Something Evil Comes reflects these demand on officers following their initial tracking down of those they think may hold vital evidence. It is a major aspect of the work of the Unsolved Crime Unit throughout the book as it tracks down those who might be minor players - or far more involved in the murder of Matthew Flynn than they are prepared  to admit.

Learn more about Something Evil Comes.

My Book, The Movie: Something Evil Comes.

--Marshal Zeringue