"In A Hard Wind"

David Housewright has won the Edgar Award and is the three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for his crime fiction. He is a past president of the Private Eye Writers of America (PWA). He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Housewright applied the Page 69 Test to In A Hard Wind, his 20th novel featuring Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie, and reported the following:

From page 69:

the hall, but just outside,” Rebecca said. “The entire street was flooded. Then the hall flooded. And the caterer couldn’t work under those conditions.”

“When my turn came, we went very small,” Rachel said.

“There were a lot fewer moving parts. Jeanette—she helped to decorate the place and set up a sound system...”

“She was J. C. taking care of her girls,” Rebecca said. “The woman who threatened to gut Charles Sainsbury like a fish—I have no idea who that was.”

“I heard that other people said similar things,” Rachel told me.

“You heard?” I asked.

“I don’t actually live on the Circle anymore. I live a couple of miles away. I just orbit the Circle like a satellite now.”

“A circlelite,” Rebecca said. “Hey, I just invented another word.”

“You did not.”

Rachel pulled her cell phone off the kitchen table and began to access it.

“We grew up here,” Rebecca said. “Mostly grew up here. I was ten and Rachel was eight when Mom and Dad bought the house about twenty-five years ago. They decided to downsize after Dad retired and moved to an apartment; my husband and I bought the house from them. They gave us a great deal.”

“Which I expect to see reflected when we receive our inheritance,” Rachel said.

“Rach wasn’t on the Circle when Jeanette had her meltdown.”

“Who was?” I asked.

Rebecca recited a list of names that were already in my notebook.

“Derek Carlson said ‘I could fucking kill him,’ ” she added. “That’s a direct quote by the way.”

My page 69 is not necessarily a good advertisement for my novel In A Hard Wind. What we have is the protagonist McKenzie interviewing two sisters about “J.C.,” a woman who has been accused of murder; who had threatened the victim in front of witnesses. No action; no suspense. However, I think it does offer the reader a sense of the tone of the book. It is very much dialogue and action driven. Plus, there’s humor.

Learn more about the book and author at David Housewright's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Kind Word.

The Page 69 Test: Stealing the Countess.

The Page 69 Test: What the Dead Leave Behind.

The Page 69 Test: First, Kill the Lawyers.

--Marshal Zeringue