"Lights Out"

Elise Hart Kipness is a former television sports reporter turned crime writer. Her debut mystery, Lights Out, the first in a series, is based on the author’s experience in the high-pressure, adrenaline-pumping world of live TV. Like her protagonist, she chased marquee athletes through the tunnels of Madison Square Garden and stood before glaring lights reporting to national audiences.

Kipness applied the Page 69 Test to Lights Out and reported the following:

Page 69 brings the reader to a scene at the city morgue. My main character, Kate Green, accompanies her best friend Yvette to view the body of Yvette’s husband, Kurt Robbins. Kurt was found shot dead in his Greenwich, CT mansion a day earlier.

I don’t know how long we sit. Ten minutes? Twenty? Yvette’s sobs turn soft and then stop. “Let me take you to the powder room, dear,” Patricia says. “You can splash some cold water onto your face.” Yvette and the woman walk down the hallway and disappear through another corridor.

I get up and step over to the door to the room where we saw the body. I turn the knob—it clicks and opens. “Hello?” I enter the brightly lit room.

“You can’t be in here.” The bald man in the lab coat appears from behind a cordoned-off area.

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to ask—did he suffer?”

The Page 69 Test works well because it highlights female friendship, which is an important theme in Lights Out.

Visit Elise Hart Kipness's website.

--Marshal Zeringue