"The Seminarian"

Hart Hanson is a novelist and TV writer, best known for creating the Fox Television Networks longest-lived scripted hourlong program Bones. He also created The Finder and Backstrom, neither of which lasted as long as Bones to Hanson’s shame and chagrin.

Before moving to Los Angeles from his native Canada, Hanson created the multiple award-winning Global Television Network program Traders. Before Traders he wrote and produced, amongst others, several Canadian TV series, including Beachcombers, The Road to Avonlea, and North of 60.

After making the move to Los Angeles, Hanson started his American TV career writing and producing TV series Cupid, Snoops, Judging Amy, and Joan of Arcadia before creating Bones.

Hanson’s first book The Driver — a crime novel set in Los Angeles — was lauded as one of The New York Times’ Best Crime novels of 2017.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Seminarian, and reported the following:

Marshall McLuhan (and the Page 69 Test) might be onto something!

Page 69 of The Seminarian features my legal investigator, Xavier Priestly, trying to get some info out of his frenemy, Cody Fiso, a literal giant who owns the most successful Security and Private Investigation Agency in Los Angeles.

Priest is doing something he hates and resents: asking Fiso for a favor. Priest tries to brush past that as quickly as possible hoping that Fiso won’t notice.

“I don’t want to waste your time here, Fiso,” Priest said, because Fiso was wasting his time.

Priest thinks that Fiso is wasting his time because Fiso has beat Priest to the punch by asking for a favor of his own. Priest is even more irritated that Fiso doesn’t seem to mind asking for favors.

Page 69 also calls into questions Priest’s ability to evaluate the deeper motivations of human beings in general.

Is Priest as difficult a person as Fiso suggests? Or is Fiso just trying to get under Priest’s skin?

Is Fiso – as Priest suggests – tight-assed and withholding? Or is Priest projecting his own motivations onto Fiso?

If Priest hates Fiso so much (the reader can insert “humanity” in place of “Fiso” in that phrase) then why does Priest feel a burst of pride when Fiso assumes that Priest behaved valorously when he was attacked by a contract killer?

Could these two, underneath it all, actually be friends?

(Again, what applies to Fiso could apply to all of Humanity.)

The Page 69 Test is good! If the reader enjoys the transactional back-and-forth between these two characters then that reader may very well enjoy the book.

Yes, page 69 combines, plot, character, tone, and some of the most important underlying themes of The Seminarian.

Well done, Marshall McLuhan.

Visit Hart Hanson's website.

Q&A with Hart Hanson.

--Marshal Zeringue