has earned an Anne Izard Storyteller’s Choice Award and was named an Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Commended Title, and one of the Wilde Awards Best Collections to Share with recommendations from Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. She now lives in Idaho.Marcantonio applied the Page 69 Test to Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace, her first Felicity Carrol mystery, and reported the following:
Felicity Carrol, my Victorian amateur detective of the Felicity Carrol series, is sometimes seen as almost too perfect. Sure she’s brilliant, wealthy and beautiful. But she is very human and flawed. She has major daddy issues. Her wealthy father neglected her so she turned to knowledge as a substitute to his love. While she can quote historical facts with her formidable memory, she is still young and learning as she goes about human nature, particularly its ability to turn evil. At times, she depends too much on science and not enough on intuition so she’ll stumble while charging ahead. Most telling is the reason she wants to solve murders and it’s not for her own fame or ego, which can sometimes flare up.Visit Patricia Marcantonio's website.
She wants justice. She has compassion for the dead.
Page 69 is a perfect example. Felicity visits the grave of a murder victim in a lonely pauper’s cemetery above the Montana mining town where the story is set. The graveyard is sad and forgotten with overgrown weeds and fallen wooden markers. The victim was a prostitute. Standing at the grave site, she can empathize with the dead’s poor life. Felicity had wanted to bring roses but couldn’t find a florist shop. Instead she brings a vow the find the killer because he’d taken everything away from the victim. And that’s very human.
--Marshal Zeringue
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