"A Dangerous Engagement"

Ashley Weaver is the Technical Services Coordinator for the Allen Parish Libraries in Louisiana. She has worked in libraries since she was 14; she was a page and then a clerk before obtaining her MLIS from Louisiana State University.

Weaver applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, A Dangerous Engagement, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I was effectively a prisoner in the washroom. I couldn’t make my exit now without letting them know I had overheard part of this delicate conversation. There was nothing for me to do but stay still and remain quiet until they had gone. I shifted backward, retreating a bit farther behind the door so I wouldn’t risk being seen.

“It’s got to be kept quiet,” Mr. Alden said in a harsh whisper. “I’ve been hearing things, that word is getting around, and that’s not going to work.”

“I don’t have any control over that.”

“Well, you’d better find some way to control it, or both of our livelihoods will be on the line.”

Page 69 of A Dangerous Engagement involves a conversation that Amory Ames accidentally overhears. Wiping a lipstick smudge from her gloves in a washroom off the foyer of her hosts’ home, she is trapped when two gentlemen began talking outside the door, unaware of her presence. Having arrived in 1930s New York for the wedding of her friend, Amory doesn’t expect to get pulled into another mystery. But the tense conversation she overhears between two men—who outwardly pretend to barely know each other— is just one of many things that tell her something isn’t right. She is soon proven correct when a murder occurs, literally at her doorstep.

A reader glancing at this page would get some idea of the intrigue and deception that exist beneath the glittering and glamorous façade of 1930s high society. This is a world where everyone is hiding something and no one can be trusted completely. It also gives an example of the sort of trouble in which Amory often finds herself—even when she doesn’t intend to get involved. Of course, once she’s found a mystery, she’s always ready and willing to look for a solution, and this case is no different. She is soon drawn into the world of speakeasies and bootleggers at the tale-end of Prohibition and must work with her husband Milo to bring a killer to justice.

Visit Ashley Weaver's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Most Novel Revenge.

The Page 69 Test: An Act of Villainy.

Writers Read: Ashley Weaver.

--Marshal Zeringue