"Fall"

Tracy Clark is the author of the Detective Harriet Foster crime fiction series, including Fall (2023) and Hide (2023). She is a two-time Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author and the 2022 winner of the Sara Paretsky Award. The four novels in her Cass Raines series (2018-2021) have also been honored as Anthony Award and Lefty Award finalists and have been shortlisted for the American Library Association's RUSA Reading List, named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Books of the Year. A native of Chicago, she works as an editor in the newspaper industry and roots for the Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks equally. She is a board member-at-large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland, a member of International Thriller Writers, and serves on the boards of Mystery Writers of America Chicago and the Midwest Mystery Conference.

Clark applied the Page 69 Test to Fall and reported the following:

From page 69:

“I’m Detective Foster,” the Black cop said. “This is my partner, Detective Li. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Alderman Deanna Leonard.”

Hmm. OK. From page 69 of my new book Fall, I think, readers are going to get genre, the sparsest idea about character, yet zero story revelation. In my defense, that’s likely got more to do with typesetting than with my pacing, but I won’t point fingers. It’s almost Christmas. I’m in a nice and jolly frame of mind. Page 69 does, however, end chapter 10 with a pretty dramatic dum-dum-dum, like every good police procedural should, so brownie points for me there.

Former Alderwoman Marin Shaw, from whose perspective the chapter is told, has recently been released from prison after a devastating fall from grace, and she is struggling to get her life back on track. The last thing in the world she wants is two female homicide cops in her face, but there they are on page 69, and neither of them is amused.

Back to the dum, dum, dum. The cops in question, Detectives Harriet Foster and Vera Li, are onto Shaw. She’s lied to them and wasted their time. They now suspect her of murdering one of her former City Council enemies in cold blood. Therefore, their visit is not a social call. No one’s going to be sipping tea and nibbling on dainty cookies. There will be no chuckles for Marin in chapter eleven.

But to the test, my page 69 fails it. The real meat and potatoes takes place a page before and a chapter after page 69. I just missed a passing grade by half a paragraph! Curses!

Visit Tracy Clark's website.

Q&A with Tracy Clark.

My Book, The Movie: What You Don’t See.

The Page 69 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Hide.

--Marshal Zeringue