"Lonely Hearts"

Lisa Gray is an Amazon #1, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. She previously worked as the Chief Scottish Football Writer at the Press Association and books columnist at the Daily Record Saturday Magazine. Her novels include: Thin Air, a Washington Post and Wall Street Journal bestseller and Amazon.com’s third-bestselling Kindle eBook of 2019; Bad Memory, a Wall Street Journal bestseller and longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize; and Dark Highway.

Gray applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Lonely Hearts, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Lonely Hearts is the first page of chapter eight so there’s less text than on a regular page. It opens in Larchmont Village, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, which is described as “a strange mix of charming and hip.” It’s clear from this page that my main character, Jessica Shaw, is looking for someone or, rather, she’s searching for a car that will lead her to that person. “There was a kind of intimate feel about the neighborhood and the search for a single car no longer seemed quite so daunting.” By the end of the page, Jessica is pretty sure she’s found the old vintage vehicle in question.

I wasn’t convinced the Page 69 Test would work but I think in the case of Lonely Hearts it does. Setting is a big part of the book and I like to write in quite a descriptive, cinematic style so that the reader can really picture where the action is taking place. I believe this particular page captures that element quite well. Even though this scene isn’t the most dramatic or suspenseful, it also shows exactly what my private eye, Jessica, does best—find people.

The owner of the car, a woman by the name of Glo Goldson, was a friend and neighbor of the missing person that Jessica has been hired to track down. The information that Glo provides turns out to be key to Jessica’s search so Page 69 is the beginning of a chapter that turns out to be crucial to the whole storyline.

Visit Lisa Gray's website.

--Marshal Zeringue