include The Good Neighbor and The Twilight Wife, a USA Today bestseller. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and rescued cats.Banner applied the Page 69 Test to After Nightfall, her third novel, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit A.J. Banner's website.I tuck the key card into my purse, the one I found with the oak tree logo. To whom could it belong? I sent Nathan a text, but he said he knew nothing about it. That leaves Lauren. The key card must have been hers, even if Jensen didn’t know. Husbands don’t know everything about their wives, do they? And vice versa?In After Nightfall, the viewpoint character, Marissa, seeks answers to the tragic death of her long-time frenemy, Lauren. The morning after a tense dinner party during which Marissa and her fiancé, Nathan, announced their engagement, Marissa found Lauren’s battered body on the beach at the bottom of a cliff. Fraught with guilt and regret, Marissa tries to figure out what happened. Did Lauren fall, was she pushed, or did she take a deliberate step into darkness?
While Marissa does interact with the detective assigned to the case, he won’t give her any insight into the official investigation, leaving Marissa to sleuth on her own. As she follows the clues, she uncovers alarming secrets about each of the dinner guests who attended the party, leading her to question the motives of everyone she thought she knew. Page 69 does represent the “whodunit” mystery tone of the novel, the idea that even those closest to us keep secrets, and Marissa’s sense of determination in her quest to discover the truth about Lauren’s death.
--Marshal Zeringue