"Take No Names"

Daniel Nieh is a writer and translator.

He grew up in Oregon and has also lived in China, Japan, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the Netherlands. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Nieh applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Take No Names, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Take No Names, Victor Li and Mark Knox are driving a rickety van through California in the middle of the night. Their destination is a mysterious address in Mexico City, where they hope to sell a rare gemstone. Victor Li is a fugitive wanted for a murder he didn't commit. Mark Knox is a small-time con artist who lost his ideals and part of his leg during his three tours in Iraq. They need to cross the border by daybreak in order to avoid the cops on their trail. They've been thrown together by circumstance, but now that they're on the road, bound by a valuable gem that they can't split in half, they're beginning to get to know each other. On this page, Victor's speculating about what will happen to them:

We make it to Mexico City. We sell the stone. We split the dough.

But then maybe we decide that it’s nice to know another soul when you’re all alone in a foreign land. So we start a new security firm together. Or we open a beach bar in a surf town on the coast. And once a year, midway through June, we sip tequila and reminisce about when we drove forty hours from one life into another.

So Victor starts opening to Mark about the dark events of his past--only to be interrupted by a high-pitched squeal from the van's rickety transmission. The van grinds to a halt, and that’s where the page and the chapter end.

In my opinion, the Page 69 Test works really well for Take No Names. Victor and Mark are traversing liminal space, with obstacles in their way and the law on their tail. At the same time, the characters are starting to grow, and their relationship is evolving. I love this part of the book. I wanted to write a page-turning global noir that explores societal disparities and shadowy international conflicts; at the same time, I tried to poke some holes in the traditional tough-guy stereotypes of crime fiction. The relationship between Victor and Mark, two ostensibly tough men with still-raw traumas in their pasts, is at the core of this story. In a cynical world in which the little guy never gets a fair shake, are they better off looking out for one another, or keeping their guards up and their weapons drawn? If they’re always watching their own backs, will they ever find a way forward together? I hope anyone who opened Take No Names to this page would be intrigued not only by the tense plotting of the story, but also the personal journeys of these troubled characters as they make their way through the night.

Visit Daniel Nieh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue