The Page 69 Test: "Gathering Mist"

Margaret Mizushima writes the internationally published Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. She serves as past president of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers

of America and was elected Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She is the recipient of a Colorado Authors League Award, a Benjamin Franklin Book Award, a CIBA CLUE Award, and two Willa Literary Awards by Women Writing the West. Her books have been finalists for a SPUR Award by Western Writers of America, a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award, and the Colorado Book Award. She and her husband recently moved from Colorado, where they raised two daughters and a multitude of animals, to a home in the Pacific Northwest.

Mizushima applied the Page 69 Test to her new book, Gathering Mist, and reported the following:

From page 69:
On Mattie’s way back through the opening, a thorn snagged her rain jacket and then pricked her hand through her gloves as she tried to brush it away. She stopped to search visually in case the same thing had happened to the person who’d dropped the wrapper, causing them to leave behind further evidence. But she couldn’t see anything.

Robo hadn’t budged and was still chewing his toy when she came back out on his side. “Good boy,” she said, reaching for the toy’s rope. “Drop.”

He took one last chomp and then released, his ears pricked and his eyes pinned to the toy while she put it away. He shifted back and forth on his feet, obviously hoping for a game of tug or fetch. “We’ll play with your ball later,” she told him as she reached again for River’s scent article. “We still have work to do.”

She planned to search this area thoroughly for River’s scent before the boots on the ground volunteers came in to search. At least the terrain was more open here, and others should be able to enter by squeezing through the same way she did.

She used her radio to report in to Sheriff Piper about the candy wrapper and how she’d marked the trail by it.

“Any sign of the boy’s scent in the area?” Piper asked.

“Not sure yet. Robo and I need about a half hour to search. Then you can send volunteers in to follow up.”

“Ten four. I’ll send a group in thirty minutes. Will you be there?”

“No. I’ll keep moving uphill if I don’t get a hit from Robo here. The spot is well marked with orange tape. They can’t miss it.”

“All right. Over.”

Mattie put away her radio, chatted Robo up with the scent article, and directed his nose to the ground where he’d found the wrapper. “Search!”

He seemed to know what she was asking as he swept his head side to side, sniffing the grass. He acted interested in the area and started slowly walking uphill toward the center of their grid. By the time he wound through trees and reached more open land, he was alternating nose to the ground with nose to the air. He circled several times, stopping to sniff a grassy patch here and there, but not seeming to pick up a track that he could follow. Mattie sensed his frustration but stayed silent and let him do his work.
Actually, page 69 is a great indicator of what Gathering Mist is about. One week before her wedding, Deputy Mattie Wray and her dog Robo accept a mission to search for a celebrity’s missing son, River Allen, on Washington's rugged Olympic peninsula. They encounter unfamiliar territory, danger lurking in the mist, and deadly secrets. When a search dog is poisoned, Cole Walker joins the team as veterinary support. Soon sinister evidence is discovered, forcing the team into a desperate race to find the child before he disappears forever.

Page 69 shows Mattie and Robo searching for the missing child. They have just found evidence that someone was in the vicinity—an empty candy wrapper. The evidence becomes important later in the book, and this scene shows Mattie edging her way through brambles that block the forest’s interior from the path. Robo has already been rewarded for finding evidence with his toy, which is why he’s chomping on a chew toy tied to a rope.

Other scenes in the book depict Washington’s dense forests filled with towering Douglas fir, pine, and moss-covered deadfall while a continuous rainy drizzle hampers their movement. The setting of this book is in sharp contrast to the drier, colder climate of Colorado where the first eight books in the series are set. If you like the outdoors, dogs, and mysteries, you might enjoy the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries. Gathering Mist is book nine in the series.