"In Her Tracks"

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle, which has sold more than 6 million books worldwide. He is also the author of The Charles Jenkins espionage series, and the David Sloane legal thriller series. He is also the author of several stand-alone novels including The 7th Canon, Damage Control, and the literary novel, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell; as well as the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Several of his novels have been optioned for movies and television series.

Dugoni applied the Page 69 Test to his new Tracy Crosswhite novel, In Her Tracks, and reported the following:

If readers were to open In Her Tracks to page 69 they would find Tracy in the midst of an interview with the apartment mate of a missing 19 year old girl. The apartment mate is a male so of course he is a possible suspect. Tracy is trying to gauge who this young man is. She’s not used to the living arrangement. It has become much more prevalent for men and women to share an apartment and not be romantically involved. So Tracy is trying to get a sense for this roommate, if the relationship with the missing young woman is as plutonic as he says it is.

From page 69 book browsers would get a good idea what the entire story is about. A girl is missing, Tracy is on the hunt and she’s starting her investigation.

I’ve found over nine novels that my readers really enjoy watching Tracy be a detective, hitting the ground running, talking to witnesses, to relatives, to possible suspects. They like to see her in action doing what a good detective does to solve a case. Investigations into true mysteries can be long and drawn out. It requires detectives to be dogged and to think outside the box. It requires detectives to go down the wrong path, correct, and try a different path. They have to be flexible to what the evidence is providing and where it will take them.

Visit Robert Dugoni's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Wrongful Death.

The Page 69 Test: Bodily Harm.

The Page 69 Test: Murder One.

The Page 69 Test: The Eighth Sister.

The Page 69 Test: A Cold Trail.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Agent.

Q&A with Robert Dugoni.

--Marshal Zeringue