"Shadowheart"

Meg Gardiner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over sixteen novels. Her thrillers have won the Edgar Award and been summer reading picks by The Today Show and O, the Oprah magazine. Called “Hitchcockian” (USA Today) and “nailbiting and moving” (Guardian), her books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Gardiner applied the Page 69 Test to the new novel in her UNSUB series, Shadowheart, and reported the following:

FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix hunts serial predators. She ventures into twilight lands and drags UNSUBs—unknown subjects—into the daylight. In Shadowheart, she carries an extra-heavy load. Convicted killer Efrem Judah Goode confesses to a dozen new murders—and draws eerie portraits of his unidentified victims. Then another layer begins emulating Goode’s murders. Caitlin must track this new murderer: a copycat, a psychopath… a competitor.

The families of missing women desperately hope that Caitlin can tell them whether their loved ones are Goode’s victims. On page 69, eighteen-year-old Finch Winter dis for evidence that her birth mother is among the dead. Finch’s adoptive family was her away from the case.

So she snoops. She and her high school boyfriend find a lockbox hidden among her adoptive mom’s belongings.

She hesitated. Zack reached for it.

“No.” She pushed his hand away. He was too eager. This wasn’t some Disney adventure film. “Let me.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor and lifted the lockbox from the cabinet. Set it on her lap, wiped the sweat from her palms, and pressed the latch.

“Oh.”

The box contained a faded snapshot of three young women leaning against a wall outside a diner. Finch picked it up. Her hand trembled.

She didn’t know any of the people in the photo. Why would her mom keep an old photo that didn’t even include herself?

But that wasn’t the thing [MC1] that made Finch’s stomach knot.

One of the young women resembled Goode’s Brooklyn Jane Doe drawing. The resemblance wasn’t just clear—it was uncanny.

Zack’s Scooby-Doo enthusiasm collapsed. His voice turned deadly serious.

“Call the FBI agent,” he said.

Finch shook her head.

“This is what she wants. This is it. Proof. The first evidence you’ve found. This is no coincidence, Finch.”

Finch stared hard at the photo. The streets in the background looked like New York. The three women in the photo were young, leaning together, not that much older than Finch was now. Eyes vivid, full of snark and something dark, despite their smiles. The one in the middle had blond hair, crooked teeth, something eager and hungry in her look.

Zack squeezed her shoulder. “She wanted evidence. What else could this be?”

Well. If it isn’t an actual clue.

Shadowheart is a thriller. It has action, chase scenes, a gunfight, and—I hope—enough suspense and tension that readers will hold their breath and bite their fingernails as they flip the pages. It also has a twisting mystery. Finch Winter and the scene on page 69 are at the heart of that.

Not bad!

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--Marshal Zeringue