each other as necessary. Darrow is a former professional volleyball player (in Italy), unsuccessful country-western singer/songwriter, import store owner, and assistant guru in a small, benign spiritual organization. Before bowing to the need for higher education, a much younger Darrow ran a punch press in a sheetmetal factory, drove a taxi, worked as a night janitor, shoveled asphalt on a road crew, and installed wood flooring. He missed being blown up by Mt. St. Helens by ten minutes, survived the 1985 Mexico City earthquake (8 on the Richter scale), and (so far) has successfully weathered his own internal disasters.
Darrow applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Not Quite Enlightened Sleuth, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Verlin Darrow's website.I’d decided on a frontal assault once I’d seen Dennis’s smug expression.My page 69 definitely passes the test. Although several basic elements aren’t revealed—the narrator is a former Buddhist nun, for example—the interplay between this insightful protagonist trying to get the truth out of non-truth tellers is typical. Throughout my mystery, it’s hard for Ivy to know who she can trust, who isn’t who they purport to be, and who is a possible suspect. Her Buddhist precepts both help and hinder her in her search for the truth.
He paused and assembled his features into what passed for humility—with most people, that is. His eyes reminded me of a hound I’d known—a conniving creature who was always stealing his sibling’s food.
“I loved your mother very much, and God knows why, she loved me back. I would never harm a hair on her head. Truly.”
“I’d like to believe you, but what you said back in your hospital room was alarming,” I told him.
“Look,” he began, leaning forward, “I can see you’re sharp, and you know I put up a front sometimes. It’s hard for me to let people in—let them see who I really am. But I’m leveling with you here. I did not kill your mother.”
“But you think someone else did? Is that what you were saying yesterday?”
He leaned back again and crossed his arms. “I said I’m taking care of that, and I will.”
“You think there was foul play?”
“I do.” He kept his face studiously neutral.
“And you think you know who it was?” I asked.
“I do.”
“Why not just go to the police—or tell me, at least?” I asked. “Don’t I have a right to know?”
“It’s complicated. I need you to trust me.”
“Dennis, you’re the person I trust least in the world right now. Everything about you seems to be inauthentic.”
He wasn’t offended. In fact, he didn’t seem to care at all.
In this scene, Ivy is trying to brace the stepfather she’s never met after her mother may have been murdered. Her bi-polar sister certainly has thought so from the outset, and now it appears she is right. Unfortunately, shortly after page 69, Dennis is murdered as well and his background as a smuggler comes to light, complicating the case.
Writers Read: Verlin Darrow (May 2023).
My Book, The Movie: Murder for Liar.
The Page 69 Test: Murder for Liar.
--Marshal Zeringue
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