The Page 69 Test: "The Traitor Beside Her"

Monday, June 5, 2023

"The Traitor Beside Her"

Mary Anna Evans is an award-winning author, a writing professor, and she holds degrees in physics and engineering, a background that, as it turns out, is ideal for writing

her new series, the Justine Byrne series. Set in WWII-era New Orleans, the first book, The Physicists’ Daughter, introduces Justine Byrne, whom Mary Anna describes as “a little bit Rosie-the-Riveter and a little bit Bletchley Park codebreaker.” When Justine, the daughter of two physicists who taught her things girls weren’t expected to know in 1944, realizes that her boss isn’t telling her the truth about the work she does in her factory job, she draws on the legacy of her unconventional upbringing to keep her division running and protect her coworkers, her country, and herself from a war that is suddenly very close to home.

Evans applied the Page 69 Test to her new book, The Traitor Beside Her, the second title in the Justine Byrne series, and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Traitor Beside Her is about…well, it’s about coffee, mostly. It’s not necessarily a representative page of the book, which in general has more action and dialogue, but it does establish how important an everyday thing can be when a war makes everyday things hard to get.

I’m in good company in using coffee as a tool for putting my readers into my characters’ sensory experiences. As an example, consider Lady Jessica’s famous meditation on the brew in Frank Herbert’s Dune, which includes the observation that the lady “drained the cup, feeling the energy and lift of its contents—hot and delicious.”

It makes sense that coffee would be a treasure on Arrakis, because water is a rarity there. The Traitor Beside Her is set in WWII-era America, so the coffee beans itself is the treasure, because coffee was rationed. So were sugar and dairy products. Once the appropriate ration coupons were gone, the average person’s ability to buy coffee was essentially gone for the rest of the month. Thus, my protagonist Justine Byrne is blown away by the easy availability of coffee at the code breaking operation where she reports for her new undercover job.

On page 69, Justine is on the threshold of the room that will be the focus of her undercover job, Room 117. Somebody in that room is selling military secrets, so she’s standing there, a cup of coffee in each hand, hoping to make friends with her targets. Or, as I wrote on page 69, she’s looking for an opportunity to use her boss’s percolator “as a weapon for democracy.”

As it turns out, simply softening her suspects up with tasty cups of sweetened caffeine is not going to work. They’re very intelligent and very eccentric, just as you’d expect the world’s best code crackers to be. One of them, Sally Tompkins, greets her at the door. While preparing to introduce Justine around, Sally mentions that Justine’s boss has a habit of chewing up and spitting out his assistants. As Justine leaves page 69, she steps into Room 117, and everybody goes silent, turning their work face-down.

Face-to-face with people whose work requires utter secrecy, Justine realizes that mere coffee won’t be enough to get her the information she wants. She’s going to have to get creative.