The Page 69 Test: "The Night Woods"

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

"The Night Woods"

Paula Munier is the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award

and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search also won a Dogwise Award. The Hiding Place and The Wedding Plot both appeared on several “Best Of” lists. Home at Night, the fifth book in the series, was inspired by her volunteer work as a Natural Resources Steward of New Hampshire. Along with her love of nature, Munier credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep affection for New England as her series’ major influences. A literary agent by day, she’s also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Happier Every Day and the memoir Fixing Freddie: The True Story of a Boy, a Mom, and a Very, Very Bad Beagle.

Munier applied the Page 69 Test to her new Mercy Carr mystery, The Night Woods, and reported the following:

Turn to page 69 of The Night Woods, the sixth entry in my Mercy Carr mystery series, and what you’ll find is our very pregnant heroine Mercy Carr at home at Grackle Tree Farm between the storms plaguing her neck of the Vermont wilderness. She’s being chastised by her mother Grace for running around trying to prove hermit Homer Grant innocent of murder, when she should be planning her baby shower.
“I’ll be careful,” Mercy said. “Promise.”

“If you’re not, you could find yourself delivering that baby alone in the woods with nothing but a dog for a midwife.”
Mercy’s mother worries that Mercy’s game warden husband Troy is not going on paternity leave soon enough, and instructs their young cousin Tandie, whom she’s sent to stay at Grackle Tree Farm for the duration, to keep an eye on Mercy, “you don’t let her out of your sight.” Which more or less sums up the plot of The Night Woods. Tandie follows Grace’s advice, but not in the way she intended. Tandie plays Watson to Mercy’s Sherlock Holmes, and together they must solve the case—as the storms rage and the wild boar rampage and Mercy’s own water breaks—before it’s too late.