"Bitter Passage"

Colin Mills graduated from the University of Queensland in 1987 with a BA in arts, majoring in Japanese language and literature. He spent most of the next eighteen years in Japan, where, after a brief career as a wire service reporter, he spent ten years in investment banking in Tokyo and a further decade in the portfolio management industry. He left the financial services industry in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the Queensland University of Technology.

Mills applied the Page 69 Test to his debut novel, Bitter Passage, a work of historical fiction, and reported the following:

The Page 69 Test works for only the first half the page. As luck would have it, page 69 of Bitter Passage is bisected by a scene break. The second half of the page—after the scene break—lacks sufficient detail to inform the reader about the plot or characters, so it fails the test. The first half of the page, however, is more helpful as it hints at the friction that is starting to build between the two main characters, Lieutenant Robinson and Assistant Surgeon Adams. It is this friction, driven by the two characters’ contrasting objectives in searching for the lost explorer, Sir John Franklin, that underpins the story.

On page 69, we find the following exchange between the two main characters, Robinson and Adams, and the seaman Billings (the POV is Robinson’s):

Perhaps Sir John could batter his way through the ice with the sheer force of his character. “I’m hungry,” Billings said again. He wheedled like an exhausted child. “Mister Adams, I’m hungry.”

Robinson glared at Adams. “For God’s sake, give him something to do. Make him be quiet.”

“Jimmy,” said Adams, “go and keep watch for bears, will you? Shout if you see one. I will give you some biscuit soon.”

Without a word, Billings stood and lumbered away.

Robinson watched him leave, his jaw clenched. I am marooned in the wilderness with a romantic and a fool, he thought.

“I see nothing odd in holding a man like Franklin in high esteem,” said Adams. “Sir John’s accomplishments are admirable. A man would do well to emulate them.”

Robinson did not attempt to conceal his disdain. “Which of his feats are so admirable? Losing half his men on the way back from Point Turnagain? Eating his boots to stay alive? Getting lost in the ice?” He lifted his knapsack onto his shoulder. “Let us hope you do not emulate him on this mission.”

This exchange reflects the characters’ personalities and motivations, and foreshadows some of the conflict to come. Robinson is a glass half-empty kind of guy; cynical and concerned mostly with what success or failure will mean for him. Adams is more the glass half-full type; optimistic and selfless, as we see in his gentle treatment of the seaman, Billings. The exchange on page 69 foreshadows a clash of morality and ambition.

One reason for writing the novel was to explore the emotional state of the men who searched for Franklin and his men, something that isn’t explicit in the historical record of events. The senior commanders, James Clark Ross and Edward Bird, seemed driven largely by friendship and duty—they’d known Franklin for years and Francis Crozier, Frankin’s second-in-command, was Ross’ best friend. As a junior officer, Lieutenant Robinson must achieve a notable feat if he is to achieve promotion at a time when distinguishing himself in battle is impossible. The zealous Adams, meanwhile, thinks finding Franklin will appease the Almighty. On the bottom rung, the ordinary seamen were there for the money (discovery service paid double the usual wage).

Visit Colin Mills's website.

My Book, The Movie: Bitter Passage.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Knife Skills For Beginners"

Orlando Murrin is the debut author of Knife Skills For Beginners, a murder mystery set in a posh London cookery school. Having started out as a magazine sub-editor, he won through to the semi-final of the BBC Masterchef programme and found himself hurled into the world of food writing. He was editor of the UK’s bestselling food magazine, BBC Good Food, for six years before taking off to rural France to create a gastronomic guesthouse. He has written six cookbooks, including A Table in the Tarn (Stewart, Tabori and Chang), which describes his French adventure, and Two’s Company (Ryland Peters & Small), devoted to the art of cooking for couples, friends and room-mates.

Murrin applied the Page 69 Test to Knife Skills For Beginners and reported the following:

Knife Skills For Beginners is set in a posh London cookery school, where chef Paul Delamare has been persuaded to teach a course at short notice. He is a charming but sad character, coming to terms with the recent death of his partner. It is on page 69 that Paul takes the reader into his confidence, describing his fall from grace ten years earlier, and subsequent meeting with Marcus.

It is the only moment in the book when Paul looks back, and a reader stumbling across it would assume the book is decidedly dark – which it isn’t. During the flashback, we learn of his downward spiral into drugs and depression after his mother’s suicide, and his rescue by best friend Julie (who breaks in through a window). It makes me tingle even now to imagine the pair weeping in each others’ arms, but it’s not characteristic of the book, which is essentially a social comedy.

This scene does however mark a dramatic change in Paul’s fortunes, because lower down the page he takes Julie’s advice to start with something ‘doable’ and goes for a haircut.

‘As fate would have it, sitting at the next chair was a businessman. He was deep in conversation with his stylist, not about hair length or conditioning products, but about frying pans.’ Paul leans back and angles his head to get a better look: ‘after all, that’s what mirrors in hairdressing salons are for.’ The debonair businessman is destined to be the love of his life.

The book has been described by readers as both funny and scary: humour is Paul’s defence mechanism, and if you ask me, murder really is terrifying. The review I most treasure, however, describes it as ‘unexpectedly moving’. Page 69 certainly moves me, so I'm glad the test landed there, even if it doesn't sum up the book as a whole.

Visit Orlando Murrin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Floreana"

Midge Raymond is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent, the short-story collection Forgetting English, and, with coauthor John Yunker, the mystery novel Devils Island. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. Raymond has taught at Boston University, Boston’s Grub Street Writers, Seattle’s Hugo House, and San Diego Writers, Ink. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she is co-founder of the boutique publisher Ashland Creek Press.

Raymond applied the Page 69 Test to Floreana and reported the following:

On page 69, Mallory, a scientist who has just returned to fieldwork after a decade away, is getting ready for an evening with unexpected visitors to Floreana Island after she has spent a long day in the equatorial heat building penguin nests. Here are the first two paragraphs on the page:

I take a cool shower and put on a loose white blouse and a long cotton skirt that will give my arms and legs a reprieve from the bug spray, though I still have to spray the backs of my hands, my wrists, my feet and ankles. I soak my palm and pat the repellent onto my cheeks, forehead, and neck.

I tie my wet hair back and, in the tiny bathroom mirror, take in my florid face, drooping eyes. I’ve avoided mirrors for months, though I have to admit that donning a skirt has as much to do with being seen next to Callie as avoiding bug spray. It feels indulgent to care what I look like—almost like a betrayal, if I let myself think of Scott and Emily—but I’m relieved to see the mirror’s reflection is not quite as bad as I thought. In the equatorial light, flecks of gold emerge from the brown of my eyes, and, thanks to the sun, my normally brown hair is sprayed with highlights.

This page doesn’t capture the novel as a whole because Floreana has two narratives—the re-imagined story of Dore Strauch, inspired by a real woman who settled on the island in the 1930s and got caught up in the mysterious disappearance of other settlers, and the contemporary story of Mallory, a penguin researcher who has returned to the field after leaving science behind to start a family.

This scene does capture a few key aspects of Mallory’s story: the complicated feelings about her husband, daughter, and what she left behind as well as what she risks by returning to the island; and her awareness of her age and the time that has slipped away since she last worked in penguin conservation. But Floreana isn’t complete without the narrative of Dore Strauch, a character inspired by a real woman who lived on Floreana and was part of a scandal in the 1930s. Only by reading both narratives can readers see how the two women struggle, despite being a century apart, with their identities and with love and family and what it means to them—and especially how they each dreamed of escape on Floreana, only to find the island was, in fact, the very place that forced them to confront their deepest, darkest desires and fears.

Learn more about the author and her work at Midge Raymond's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Last Continent.

Writers Read: Midge Raymond (June 2016).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Champagne Letters"

Kate MacIntosh is always in search of the perfect bottle of wine, a great book, and a swoon worthy period costume drama. You’ll find her in Vancouver making friends with every dog she meets, teaching writing, and listening to true crime podcasts while lounging on the sofa in sweats and spouting random historical facts she finds interesting.

MacIntosh applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Champagne Letters, and reported the following:

How was I to compete with the sugary fiction the wench was dishing out?

My first reaction to the Page 69 Test was that the scene would give a reader a sense of character and tone to the book. While the character has had a minor setback, you can sense that she isn’t going to simply roll over and accept it.

The scene on page 69 takes place in the early 1800s with Barbe-Nicole Clicquot talking with her young daughter Clementine. Clementine is falling under the spell of a housemaid that Barbe-Nicole knows is up to no good. The Widow realizes that stories from others, especially those spun to be alluring, can be a trap. Then I realized the line above touches on a major theme in the book and as a result the scene passes the test more than I initially thought.

I’m fascinated by the power of narrative. It’s often not what happens to us, but the meaning we put on those events. We need to recognize the stories we tell ourselves and the power of those tales to shape our lives. The protagonist in the present-day story line, Natalie, is reeling from her divorce. Her husband of twenty-five years has left her for another (younger) woman and left her feeling abandoned and without direction. Her whole life she put him first and now she doesn’t even know what she wants. Reading the letters of the Widow Clicquot, she learns to tell herself a different story. That perhaps the story is that her husband leaving is a reflection on him, not her. And she can create an even better life for herself, even if she doesn’t fully know what she wants that to look like. Natalie’s discovering that she doesn’t need to believe other people’s stories, or wait to be rescued, and she’s in control of her own destiny.

Visit Kate MacIntosh's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Buried Road"

Katie Tallo has been an award-winning screenwriter and director for more than three decades. After winning an international contest for unpublished fiction, she began writing novels, including Dark August and Poison Lilies. She has a daughter and lives with her husband in Ottawa, Ontario.

Tallo applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Buried Road, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Buried Road, Gus and her young daughter run from a lighthouse where they had taken refuge for the night. Smoke billows everywhere but they soon see that it’s not the lighthouse that’s on fire. It’s their car, and along with it, the clues they’ve uncovered so far are burning. Gus is devastated and blames herself while her daughter, Bly, tries to comfort her. Gus says “Bad sticks to me.” The moment drops us right into the precariousness of the situation the two find themselves in as they search for a missing loved one. Clearly, someone wants them to stop looking. Gus’s past is also never far from her mind. “I was there when my mother was murdered,” she says at the bottom of page 69, as if to say she is the common factor in all bad things that happen. As her daughter tries to reassure her, their complicated, mother-daughter, dynamic is evident.

Yes, The Page 69 Test would give reader’s a very good glimpse at both the relationships in the novel and the dangers yet to come for the two protagonists as they travel along a Buried Road.

Visit Katie Tallo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dark August.

Q&A with Katie Tallo.

Writers Read: Katie Tallo (June 2022).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Echo"

Tracy Clark is the author of Echo, the third novel in the Detective Harriet Foster police procedural series. She is also author of the Cass Raines PI series, a two-time Sue Grafton Memorial Award- winning author, the 2024 Anthony Award- winner for Best Paperback Original, the 2024 Lefty Award-winner for Best Mystery and the 2022 winner of the Sara Paretsky Award. She is a board member-at-large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland and a member of International Thriller Writers, and serves on the boards of Mystery Writers of America Chicago and the Midwest Mystery Conference.

Clark applied the Page 69 Test to Echo and reported the following:

Darn it! My books always seem to fail the Page 69 Test. Readers turning to page 69 in my latest Det. Harriet Foster novel, Echo, won’t get much story, but they will, thank goodness, get a great deal of character. In fact, page 69 finds my complicated, inwardly directed cop, Harri, finally making an effort to connect with her new partner, Det. Vera Li.

Like a snail in a shell, Harri has been figuratively trudging through the morass of grief, loss and guilt, also deep pain and the feeling of lost opportunity to have made things different. She’s lost a partner, a young son, a marriage, and the life she had before, and hasn’t yet found a way to right the ship.

And in comes Det. Vera Li, who sees her, grabs ahold, and is determined to help her out of the hole she’s in. Li is quite a different character. Married, with a two-year-old son and her mother living in the home, Vera is open, smart, intuitive, ambitious, and sees the world half full. She hasn’t experienced loss on the level that Harri has experienced it.

While Harri keeps the world, and everyone in it, three arm lengths from her, Vera doesn’t appear to need the distance. Slowly, the two begin to mesh and come to not only like each other, but respect and depend on one another.

Page 69 reveals another inch forward for Harri, and a quiet victory for Vera. In this short exchange of dialogue, we get a sense of the two together, the shorthand and trust that’s forming. I don’t think the two will get to the braiding each other’s hair stage—or maybe they will; I’ll have to see—but there’s less push from Harri now, a little crack in her armor here, even a little glimpse into the woman she used to be before her world fell apart.

From page 69:

A white bag dropped onto her desk. Harri jumped. “Jesus.”

Detective Vera Li stood there in a beanie and a damp navy peacoat. Ready for the day, her dark, keen eyes having no doubt scanned the room and everybody in it. “Crullers from Mason’s,” she announced.

Vera dropped her battered backpack on her desk, then plopped down in her squeaky chair, plopping a similar bag in front of her. “The line was halfway out the door, but they’re worth it.”

“What’s the occasion? It’s not my birthday.”

Harri eyed the bag in front of her, then the one in front of Vera, grease splotching the sides of both. “Or yours.”

Vera’s brows furrowed, skeptical. “You know my birthday?”

“March second. You want the year?”

Vera lifted her pack, opened the bottom drawer, shoved it in. “Should I be afraid?”

Harri shrugged, offered a small smile. “I can’t tell you what to be.”

Harri’s got a ways to go, but page 69 is a good start.

Visit Tracy Clark's website.

Q&A with Tracy Clark.

My Book, The Movie: What You Don’t See.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (July 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Runner.

The Page 69 Test: Hide.

The Page 69 Test: Fall.

Writers Read: Tracy Clark (December 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Scotzilla"

Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the Dandy Gilver historical detective stories, the Last Ditch mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist The Day She Died and Mary Higgins Clark finalist Strangers at the Gate. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters’ Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.

McPherson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Scotzilla, and reported the following:

From page 69:

paediatric HDU was permanently exhausted and could fall asleep on the lip of a volcano.

‘I’ll join you, Roger,’ Noleen said. ‘In my own room, I mean.’ Noleen wasn’t a huge napper but she was an enthusiastic lunchtime drinker and siestas were standard. v ‘Of course, we understand if you don’t want to come, Lexy,’ Todd said. ‘After the dragon slasher.’

I nodded, then I thought some more. People were in and out of that cemetery all day every day: gardeners, mourners, dog walkers, our little band of enthusiastic weirdos. ‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘Lightning never strikes and all that.’

‘What is it this time anyway?’ I said, as we made our way through the streets to the familiar gates.

‘Skeleton,’ said Todd.

I sat up a bit straighter in the back seat.

‘How is that left for a PI to deal with?’ I said. ‘Do the cops know? Have they called forensics?’

‘Wait and see,’ said Kathi. ‘Oh no! Todd, park outside and let’s walk in.’

I looked where she was facing and saw that there was a funeral taking place in the cemetery today, a cluster of dark-clothed adults and children all processing behind a sort of cart with a coffin on top, pulled by two men in the national dress of some country I didn’t recgonise. They looked far too festive for the occasion.

‘Do we know where we’re supposed to be going this time?’ I said. ‘What if the coordinates take us to right beside the burial?’

‘Linda said hug the wall and walk clockwise round a quarter of the perimeter,’ Kathi told me. ‘That bunch’ – she braced both hands on my shoulders and boosted herself up to see – ‘are stopping in the middle.’

The cemetery was big enough that the mourners didn’t notice us as we picked our way through the outer ring of gravestones, clambering occasionally, tripping more than once when we encountered those flat slabs that are supposed to make the sexton’s life so easy. Before too long, we arrived the site of the latest incident.

‘Is it real?’ I said, peering at the skeleton.

‘You should know,’ said Kathi. ‘You’re the last one of us to have seen a skeleton.’ I shuddered at the memory then scrutinised what lay on the tufty grass of the grave in front of us.

We did so well with this last time, but Scotzilla gets a C- on the Page 69 Test. Well, a browser would find out that there's a crime, cops, forensics, and a PI. They would also discover that a cemetery features in the story and that the pge 69 skeleton is not the start of the mayhem, since “skeleton” is the answer to the question “What is it this time?” and is described as “the latest incident”.

I do think that “Of course we understand if you don’t want to come, Lexy. After the dragon slasher” is a speech that would make me want to find out more if I came across it. Dragon slasher? Perhaps, too, the chance to meet a “band of enthusiastic weirdoes” is going to be enticing to exactly the reader who might enjoy the novel.

It’s surprising that there’s no mention of the wedding that’s the background setting to the story. And it’s a bit surprising that the language is so clean and PG. I am sorry that the running joke about a group called the Sex Volunteers didn’t pop up on this page, although one of its parents did. Ach, but now I’m being mysterious for mystery’s sake.

Despite page 69 having a funeral on it, Scotzilla is a caper about a wedding and some pranks and a murder and California and love and family (blood and found) and I do hope you'll give it a go.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Trouble Island"

Sharon Short is the author of sixteen published books. Her newest, Trouble Island, is historical suspense set in the 1930s on a Lake Erie island. Short is a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, for which she writes the column, “Level Up Your Writing (Life)” and teaches for Writer’s Digest University. She is a frequent, in-demand speaker at libraries, book clubs, and writing groups.

Short applied the Page 69 Test to Trouble Island and reported the following:

Trouble Island is set on a Lake Erie private island owned by a Prohibition gangster’s estranged wife, and narrated by an alleged murderess—forced into hiding as the wife’s servant—who plots her escape just as the gangster and a rogue ice storm make unexpected landfall.

Page 69 of Trouble Island reads as follows:

…the way she sang it made me realize I’d only been running away, not toward something. So I just finished lamely, “—it reminded me of home.”

To my surprise, Rosita asked with genuine curiosity, “Where’s that?”

“Southeast Ohio. Nowhere important.” The way she’d sung it, I couldn’t help but wonder what the song meant to her. So the question burst out of me: “Is that what you were thinking of? Home? You seemed somewhere else when you sang. I think that’s why it took me back—”

“That’s nonsense, doll,” Pony said. “But ma’am, it’s good to meet you, and uh, before you women folk get to gabbing, I’d love an introduction to your husband—I did some, ah, work for one of his men, over on Third—”

That took me by surprise. He hadn’t told me this. But then, he’d been coming home late, sometimes after midnight. And he had given me a more generous grocery allowance, and told me to get better cuts of meat for supper. I’d only asked him about it once. He’d backhanded me, and when my nose bled, told me that’s what I got for being nosy, and then cackled like he’d just made the cleverest joke.

Pony went on, “We came here tonight ’cause I was hoping to meet him, but, ah, it’s hard to get—” He stopped, stared longingly over at Eddie’s table, then jumped a little, straightening his shoulders like he was already a good soldier, for Eddie was making his way over to us.

I almost laughed at Pony. Couldn’t he see that Eddie didn’t notice him, or me? That Eddie’s smoldering gaze, the hint of a tender smile on his otherwise cruel slash of a mouth, was only for Rosita?

This page from Trouble Island captures the driving force of the plot: Aurelia (the narrator) is on the lam on a Lake Erie island owned by the estranged wife (Rosita) of a major gangster (Eddie). However, the scene on page 69 takes place before Aurelia must go on the lam, and before Rosita and Eddie’s marriage falls apart. Aurelia and Rosita are meeting for the first time, as Aurelia and her then-husband Pony go to a speakeasy where Rosita is performing. Their friendship ends up rocking both of their worlds.

I love that this page also captures Aurelia’s past insecurity and troubled life, which serves as a marked contrast with her current life on Trouble Island—the bulk of the novel—and her striving to break free from her past haunts and get a fresh start.

Learn more about the book and author at Sharon Short's website.

The Page 69 Test: My One Square Inch of Alaska.

--Marshal Zeringue