"Not Dead Yet"

Jeffrey Siger is an American living on the Aegean Greek island of Mykonos. A former Wall Street lawyer, he gave up his career as a name partner in his own New York City law firm to write the international best-selling, award recognized Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series of mystery thrillers telling more than just a fast-paced story. The New York Times described his novels as “thoughtful police procedurals set in picturesque but not untroubled Greek locales” and named him as Greece’s thriller novelist of record.

Siger applied the Page 69 Test to his latest Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery thriller, Not Dead Yet, and reported the following:

Here is page 69:

“Yes, why should you?” She giggled again.

Andreas exhaled. “Okay, so what did he have to tell you relevant to the crash?”

Lila took a sip of wine. “He’s gone over all the documents provided to him by my company and asked the AAIASB for additional documents. So far, all the maintenance records and logs he reviewed show nothing out of the ordinary and everything to be in working order. But unless the black boxes are found, we may never definitively know what happened.”

“How about a non-definitive opinion or even a wild-ass guess on what brought down the plane and how Onofrio managed to be the only one who survived?”

“According to Niko, every crash is unique in its own way. In this case, it’s the rarity of not one, but at least two passengers surviving a high velocity impact at sea.”

“Two?”

“Yes,” nodded Lila. “Presumably an autopsy will determine that Onofrio’s wife was alive after the crash, and with the bodies of the four other known occupants still unaccounted for, he can’t rule out more survived for at least some period after the crash.”

“That seems hard to believe.”

“I had the same reaction. He said some years back, a commercial jetliner flying empty except for a crew of four—two pilots and two flight attendants––were on a mission to rescue a hundred fisherman stranded in a remote Alaskan village. Three of the crew sat in the cockpit, while one flight attendant sat in the back of the plane reading. Descending through thick fog on what the pilots mistakenly thought the correct flight path for landing on a rural airstrip, the plane crashed into a sloping hillside miles before the runway. The careening impact ripped off the tail section, including the last two rows of seats, as the fuselage continued tearing across the hillside to a stop. Miraculously all survived, including the flight attendant who’d been sitting in one of the last two rows torn off the plane along with the tail section. When the three from the cockpit found their crew mate, she was injured, but alive; still strapped into her seat sitting off by itself away from the remains of the rest of the plane.”

Andreas shook his head. “I’d call that crazy luck or a downright miracle.”

In all the years I’ve taken the Page 69 Test, never before has that bellwether test so perfectly captured my book’s central plot elements as it does when applied to Not Dead Yet, my 14th Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery-thriller.

The page begins with a conversation between Andreas and his wife, Lila, regarding the details of an unofficial investigation into the crash of a private jet resulting in the apparent deaths of all onboard but Dimitris Onofrio, a powerful, influential and ruthlessly corrupt mega-rich Greek businessman. Paranoid and vengeful to the core, one dares not offend Onofrio and witnesses prepared to testify against him mysteriously die before they have the chance to do so.

Onofrio’s wife is thought to have died from the crash, and though Onofrio now lies comatose in a hospital room, Kaldis has no doubt that once conscious he’ll seek vengeance against anyone he suspects responsible for the death of his beloved wife. Chief among those suspects is Andreas’ own wife who’s more mixed up in the accident than Andreas ever suspected.

At the heart of Not Dead Yet is an ex officio effort on the part of Andreas and his team to determine what caused the crash, how Onofrio’s wife died, and who was responsible––before Onofrio awakes and begins seeking his revenge. All of those plot points are at play on page 69.

All that’s missing is the role glorious Greece plays in all my books. Here’s a bit of that.

Set largely along Greece’s southwestern Peloponnesian coastline with the Ionian Sea, the plot moves north from where Greek mythology places the entrance to Hades, to search for clues along the coastal perimeter of the historically and agriculturally rich Messinian Bay region. From there it’s on to Navarino where Greeks fought the most important sea battle of their 1821 War for Independence and today is home to Costa Navarino, one of the world’s most luxurious and celebrated golf resorts.

Visit Jeffrey Siger's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Mykonos.

The Page 69 Test: Prey on Patmos.

The Page 69 Test: Target Tinos.

The Page 69 Test: Mykonos After Midnight.

The Page 69 Test: A Deadly Twist.

Q&A with Jeffrey Siger.

The Page 69 Test: At Any Cost.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Silver and Smoke"

Van Hoang is the author of Girl Giant and the Monkey King, Girl Giant and the Jade War, and the forthcoming Auntie Q's Golden Claws Nail Salon for middle grade readers. Her adult debut novel is The Monstrous Misses Mai; Silver and Smoke is her new novel. Hoang earned her bachelor’s in English at the University of New Mexico and her master’s in library information science at San Jose State University. She was born in Vietnam, grew in up Orange County, California, and now resides in Los Angeles with her family.

Hoang applied the Page 69 Test to Silver and Smoke and reported the following:

From page 69:

Issa was so sick, she hardly remembered the return trip from Catalina.

Only that Olivia took care of everything, buying their fares, making sure they got to the right dock, and guiding her onto the ferry and then onto the streetcar, where Issa shut her eyes and endured the clanky ride. She finally collapsed onto their bed at home, where she slept for what felt like weeks. She recalled vague images, blurry along the edges, of Ma and Olivia checking on her, and even though she felt horrible, she was glad to have an excuse not to join Ma at the hotel to fold laundry for a few extra dollars.

When she finally felt well enough to get out of bed one afternoon, Ma was already at work, and Olivia was reading a newspaper in the kitchen. A pot of some savory-smelling broth gave off steam on the stovetop.

"You're alive," Olivia said with an exaggerated sigh. "I was begin-ning to worry."

"I don't feel alive," Issa said. Her stomach growled loudly.

"That's a good sign," Olivia said, setting a bowl in front of Issa. She waited for Issa to take several sips before giving her that smile that meant she had a plan.

"What is it?" Issa asked.

"How do you feel, first. Are you well enough?"

"Well enough for what?"

Olivia leaned forward and grabbed Issa's hands. "For our screen test."

Did it pass the test?

This excerpt is from a scene right after Issa and Olivia do something quite daring by crashing a party in hopes of getting an audition, the first step to achieving their dreams of becoming a movie star. The passage does an excellent job portraying Issa and Olivia's "before" life as they're about to change everything and pursue their dreams and ambitions. I think it gives a glimpse into who they are as regular people--just hard workers, willing to do anything to change their circumstances. It also shows the friendship between Issa and Olivia and how well they take care of each other, as well as those they care about, including Issa's mother. I think it ends on a perfect cliff-hanger as well!

Visit Van Hoang's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Monstrous Misses Mai.

--Marshal Zeringue

"No Precious Truth"

Chris Nickson is the author of eleven Tom Harper mysteries, eight highly acclaimed novels in the Richard Nottingham series, and seven Simon Westow mysteries. He is also a well-known music journalist. He lives in his beloved Leeds.

Nickson's new novel, No Precious Truth, is the first title in a brand-new WWII historical thriller series introducing Sergeant Cathy Marsden – a female police officer working for the Special Investigation Branch – who risks her life to protect the city of Leeds from an escaped German spy!

Nickson applied the Page 69 Test to No Precious Truth and reported the following:

Does page 69 of No Precious Truth tell us much about the book?

It does, because it contains an important break for the Leeds squad of the Special Investigation Branch in their hunt for Jan Minuit, an escaped German spy in 1941.

After a nightclub raid, Sergeant Cathy Marsden, a female police officer second to the SIB, is questioning the female employees who’ve been brought in, and one of them reveals something important:

Finally Cathy passed her the photograph of Minuit.

‘What about him, Evelyn? Has he been around at all?’

Evelyn stared at it for a long time. ‘Someone who looked like him. I think it was Tuesday night. As soon as he came in, Mr Rawlings took him into the back.’

Cathy felt goose pimples rise along her arms, pulse beating faster.

‘How sure are you?’ She tried to tamp down the urgency in her voice.

‘He looked like that picture. Nice-looking bloke. Big.’ That sounded like a match.

‘What was he wearing?’

‘A suit.’ The girl thought, then blinked. ‘I remember I was surprised he didn’t have a coat or hat because it was perishing out.’

‘Did you see him again?’

She shook her head. ‘Never thought about it. People came in and I was busy. Why, who is he?’

‘Someone we want to find.’

They had a real sniff of him now, beyond any doubt.

‘You’re a minor,’ Cathy said as she finished. ‘Under twenty-one. I can’t just let you go. Do you live with your parents?’

A nod. ‘Me mam. Worse bloody luck.’

‘I’ll have someone escort you home.’

It pushes the plot along, a real sign that Minuit is in Leeds, and it offers and insight into Cathy, the sharp question and observation, drawing Evelyn out. While it doesn’t reveal everything, it offers a glimpse and starts to draws the reader into the wartime world of No Precious Truth.

Visit Chris Nickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Psalm.

Q&A with Chris Nickson.

The Page 69 Test: The Molten City.

My Book, The Movie: Molten City.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (August 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Them Without Pain.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Chris Nickson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The California Dreamers"

Amy Mason Doan is the bestselling author of The Summer List, Summer Hours, Lady Sunshine, and The California Dreamers. She earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MA in journalism from Stanford University, and has written for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes, among other publications. She grew up in Danville, California, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The California Dreamers and reported the following:

Page 69 of The California Dreamers distills my novel’s plot and tension into one page quite nicely! The book is about Ronan, the only girl growing up in a surf-van family on the West Coast in the 80s. She leaves their off- the-grid lifestyle for mysterious reasons at 17, but then 15 years later, she reunites with her three brothers and her mother for her father’s memorial service on an island.

On page 69, we’re on a beach near San Diego in the past thread of the story:

The twins and I decide not to tell Cap about the photographer. He only got Charlie close up, really, and now he’s gone. And we don’t want anything to spoil Charlie and Bass’s last night.

Since the Merrick family is fiercely private, their father, Cap, forbids photographs of them. He’s been known to throw cameras in the water or rip film out, ruining it. But today a new friend about Ronan’s age, Charlie, horsed around in front of a photographer on the beach, attracting attention. The family is allowed to socialize with Charlie because her father is a fellow vanner that they trust, but she doesn’t know their rules...and the siblings have broken a huge one in not telling their father what happened earlier on the beach.

When a photograph of the family “goes viral,” to use today’s term, it threatens their way of life. But nobody knows who the photographer is. Was it the one from this day? Or someone else entirely?

It’s one of the central mysteries of the book.

The photograph also brings the family together at the end. But in this early scene, where the siblings are young teens and they don’t know what life has in store for them, they’d never envision that a single photograph could so upend their lives and also provide healing – if they’ll let it.

The next paragraph captures the joy of their life, their attachment to nature and ethos of living simply, and the special thrill of having two guests for their dinner on the beach:

Mama and I make abalone stew, and potatoes with wild rosemary we picked this morning, zucchini pancakes, towers of them, plums, spiced walnuts, and our big glass jug of sun tea, which we’ve been tending to all day, moving it around the road like a sundial so it never felt shade. With a sweet laugh at herself, Mama adds sprigs of mint to each cup.

She likes company as much as being alone, I think.

At least this company. At least once in a while...

Here we get a good sense of Mama’s character – secretive, floaty, withholding – and also of our protagonist’s. Ronan, or Ro, tries to figure people out. She’s softhearted, clever, and passionate. Cameras are forbidden, but she takes mental pictures whenever she can, and her observations are shrewd even if she’s had no formal education and her world is small.

The Page 69 Test works perfectly in this case...but of course I hope people will read the entire book!

Visit Amy Mason Doan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Summer Hours.

My Book, The Movie: Lady Sunshine.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Red Clay"

Charles B. Fancher is a writer and editor, and a former senior corporate communications executive for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He also worked as a journalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Detroit Free Press, and WSM-TV, as well as a publicist for the ABC Television Network. Fancher was previously a member of the School of Communications faculty at Howard University and the adjunct faculty at Temple University. He lives in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains.

Fancher applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Red Clay, and reported the following:

Early in Red Clay, John Robert Parker, a southern Alabama plantation owner, believing the Confederacy will lose the Civil War, concocts a scheme to save his fortune, which results in his death and makes Felix, an enslaved boy, the keeper of a powerful secret that, if revealed, could destroy the Parker family and endanger Felix’s family as well.

On page 69, Marie Louise Parker, John Robert’s widow, is coming to grips with what the future holds now that her husband is dead. What lies ahead for her daughter and two sons as the Civil War grinds to an end? She is fearful that the boys will be drafted as cannon fodder in a futile last effort to thwart inevitable defeat, and she is worried that even if they survive, the older son’s personality and interests are ill-suited for life in the agrarian South.

Although the Page 69 Test is a questionable fit for Red Clay, it nevertheless might lead a browser to buy it for three reasons: 1) it sets up a pivotal moment in one of the novel’s key plot turns; 2) it demonstrates the complexity and insightfulness of one of the main characters; and 3) it provides a browser with a feeling for the book’s style and pacing.

A strength of Red Clay, as a work of historical fiction, is that it uses complex interpersonal relationships, often asymmetrical, to provide readers with insights into a formative period that spans the final months of the Civil War, the Reconstruction era, and the arrival of Jim Crow through two very different lenses—that of the white planters and bourgeoisie on one side, and that of the Black formerly enslaved on the other—as they try to understand their lives in a world in which all of the old rules have changed. It is a complicated, dangerous, and loving story of a period that helps to explain who we, as Americans, are today.

Visit Charles B. Fancher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Villages"

Novelist, screenwriter and playwright Robert Inman is a native of Elba, Alabama where he began his writing career in junior high school with his hometown weekly newspaper. He left a 31-year career in television journalism in 1996 to devote full time to creative writing.

Inman applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Villages, and reported the following:

I’m on page 69 of my new novel, Villages, and I’m frankly stunned at how straight it goes to the heart of the book.

Villages is the story of 21-year-old Jonas Boulware, who has reluctantly returned to his small hometown, wounded in body and spirit from combat in the Middle East. He is living temporarily with Doctor Frank Ainsley, a friend and mentor since his childhood. Jonas is by nature a caregiver, compelled to minister to the needs of people around him. That’s why he joined the Navy after high school and became a hospital corpsman (medic). He was the “Doc” for a Marine combat platoon, and saved lives during an attack while almost losing his own.

Doc Ainsley knows Jonas better than just about anyone, including Jonas’s own parents. On page 69, he and Jonas are talking about failure. In being a medic to those Marines, Jonas kept some alive, but lost others, and the losing cuts right to his soul as a caregiver. Doc knows the territory, because – like anyone who treats patients – he can’t save everybody.

Doc says:

“Jonas, you are one of the kindest, most compassionate people I have ever known. Unheard of in a person your age. You love people in the finest sense of the word. You want to make everything right for everybody, even when you know you can’t, and you try your damndest even when it wrenches your guts out. For God’s sake, don’t ever lose that. It’s the curse people like you and me to care, and to keep trying when we fail because we care. But you have to reconcile, Jonas, reconcile yourself to failure. Do all humanly possible, then let it go. If you can’t do that, you either quit or go mad.”

Jonas is trying mightily to keep the ghosts of his war experience at bay, but nightmares and flashbacks keep intruding. Still, he can’t stop trying to be a caregiver, because it goes to the very core of his being.

In caring and giving, and with the help of friends like Doc Ainsley and an unorthodox counselor, he begins to face his trauma, reconcile with failure, and see a glimmer of hope that he can come to grips with his new normal.

Visit Robert Inman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Waters of Destruction"

Originally from Southern California, Leslie Karst moved north to attend UC Santa Cruz (home of the Fighting Banana Slugs), and after graduation, parlayed her degree in English literature into employment waiting tables and singing in a new wave rock and roll band. Exciting though this life was, she eventually decided she was ready for a “real” job, and ended up at Stanford Law School.

For the next twenty years Karst worked as the research and appellate attorney for Santa Cruz’s largest civil law firm. During this time, she discovered a passion for food and cooking, and so once more returned to school—this time to earn a degree in Culinary Arts.

Now retired from the law, Karst spends her time cooking, singing alto in the local community chorus, gardening, cycling, and of course writing. She and her wife and their Jack Russell mix, Ziggy, split their time between Santa Cruz and Hilo, Hawai'i.

Karst applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Waters of Destruction, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Waters of Destruction, Valerie Corbin—who’s been asked by her pal Isaac to help prove his girlfriend Sachiko innocent of the murder of Hank, a bartender at the Speckled Gecko where Valerie works—is trying to extract information about the dead man from Jun, the head bartender at the restaurant. Jun, however, is not eager to give out information to this malihini (newcomer to the the island). But then as Valerie presses him further, he becomes more and more agitated. Could he have something to hide?

The Page 69 Test actually works fairly well for this book. Not only does it showcase Valerie’s nosiness and sleuthing abilities, but perhaps more importantly, it gives the reader a glimpse into the Hawaiian culture through Jun, a Big Islander of Filipino descent who freely employs the local Pidgin.

One of my primary goals in setting a mystery series on the Big Island of Hawai‘i was to share this wondrous place with readers who’ve never had the opportunity to visit my beloved “Orchid Isle,” and with those who may have been, but would love to return via armchair traveling.

I of course wanted to show readers the black sand beaches dotted with dozing sea turtles, the coco palms swaying in the gentle trade winds, and the psychedelic tropical fish swimming through the coral reefs. But what makes the Big Island so very special to me is the history of immigration to the Hawaiian islands, which has led to a society all its own.

Long after the original Polynesians arrived via canoe some eight hundred years ago came the whalers, then the missionaries and other haoles, who ended up in control of vast sugarcane and pineapple plantations. And then came wave after wave of workers brought in to work those plantations, including Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Filipinos (whose lingua franca on the plantations evolved into the modern Hawaiian Pidgin). As a result, the Big Island is now one of the most culturally diverse places in all the country.

So my hope is that the Orchid Isle mysteries will bring to readers a picture of what Hawai‘i is truly like—not for tourists, but for those who actually reside here. And page 69 of Waters of Destruction is a good start to that.

Visit Leslie Karst’s website.

Coffee with a Canine: Leslie Karst & Ziggy.

My Book, The Movie: The Fragrance of Death.

Q&A with Leslie Karst.

--Marshal Zeringue

"One Level Down"

Mary G. Thompson is the author of The Word, Flicker and Mist, and other novels for children and young adults, as well as the new sci-fi novella One Level Down. Her contemporary thriller Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee was a winner of the 2017 Westchester Fiction Award and a finalist for the 2018-2019 Missouri Gateway award. Her short fiction has appeared in Dark Matter Magazine, Apex Magazine, and others. Thompson is originally from Eugene, Oregon, where she attended the University of Oregon School of Law. She practiced law for seven years, including five years in the US Navy JAGC, and now works as a law librarian. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children from The New School and completed the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television's Professional Program in Screenwriting. She lives in Washington, DC.

Thompson applied the Page 69 Test to One Level Down and reported the following:

Since this is a novella and the text is only 158 pages long, page 69 is a decent way into the book. Here we have Ella, who is fifty-eight but being forced by Daddy to look and act as if she’s five, finally meeting the Technician who came from outside. Now she’s realizing how difficult her plan for escape is going to be to execute:

I know I’ll never get Niclaus alone at the party. After we leave this house, he’ll be pulled in a million directions. He’ll exit our universe, fix our glitches, and never be seen again. And my next chance won't come for another sixty years. I’ve spent a thousand hours thinking about what I’d do in this moment. Now that it’s here, I realize how stupid my plan is. It’s not a plan really, it’s just a hope.

“Sounds like fun,” Niclaus says as they disappear into Daddy’s office and Daddy closes the door in front of me. I don’t go to my room, though. I go to the living room and pace around. I circle and circle and circle, and I know that with every moment I’m acting less like a child. I’m letting my entire facade, and everything I need to survive, fall apart because this moment is too important and too quick, and I have to hang on.

This page does a pretty good job of telling you what the story is about. You learn that this is a simulated universe, what the technician is there to do, and that Ella is trapped and needs his help. You also get a sense of Ella’s desperation. Also on this page, we see her thinking of her deleted stepmother and leaping back into the act of pretending she’s a five-year-old.

“I’m going to build a spaceship,” I say, pretending like I’ve understood nothing. “Daddy says we have lots of planets out there just like you do.”

One thing I tried to convey is that even though Ella is trapped in a terrible situation, there are positive things about their universe. If you weren’t under Daddy’s thumb, you could appreciate the beautiful nature and the potential for building up a society. There’s a tremendous amount of lost potential when we hold people back to suit our own interests, and a lot of promise in allowing our children to explore. And ultimately, you often can’t hold others back no matter how much you want to. Ella is determined to find a way out, whether it’s via the Technician or other means. She knows she deserves to be able to go out into the world and build spaceships instead of being trapped in one man’s house. I hope readers will root for her to get what she needs.

Visit Mary G. Thompson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Four Queens of Crime"

Rosanne Limoncelli is an author, filmmaker, and storyteller living in Brooklyn. She has written, directed, and produced short narrative films, documentaries, and educational films. Limoncelli also writes plays, feature scripts, poetry, games, mysteries, and science fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Suspense Magazine, and Noir Nation, and her short films have been screened in festivals around the world.

Limoncelli applied the Page 69 Test to her debut mystery novel, The Four Queens of Crime, and reported the following:

From page 69:

The two beautiful young women had danced a quick-paced, swinging sort of dance, laughing with joy, their eyes only for each other. The song ended and they hugged, catching their breath. The next tune was a slow romantic ballad and the embrace turned into a slow dance. Kate and Sofia seemed completely lost in the music and the rhythm. Dorothy couldn’t take her eyes off them. Suddenly, Sir Henry had stormed onto the dance floor and pulled them apart.

He had grabbed Kate’s arm, his mouth close to her ear, saying something low and harsh. Kate’s face had turned red, her fists clenched in anger. Sir Henry’s hand twisted her arm as he held it tightly. Then he had marched her to the buffet, Sofia following behind them in confusion.

Remembering it now, Dorothy felt her own face flush. Being reprimanded in public by your father was not something a young person felt lightly, which she knew from firsthand experience. She had loved her own father, and revered his reputation and intellect. But there had been times when his Victorian sensibility had made her heart ache. Going away to school, and the friendships she made with the other girls there, had been liberating. She looked at Kate and Sofia near her at the dining table—it was obvious they meant a lot to each other.

“Cara mia,” Sofia was saying to Kate. “Non ti preoccupare. Io sono qui.”

Dorothy was fluent in Italian and knew that she had said, ‘My dear, don’t worry, I am here.’ Kate was still weeping softly, on and off, Sofia stroked her hair and squeezed her hand. Dorothy wondered what exactly Kate’s father had said to her as he pulled her off the dance floor. Perhaps he thought the girls were a little too close. After all, they weren’t children any longer, they were young ladies, and it was a very public event. Whatever he had said, it now would linger in Kate’s heart as her last interaction with her father. Unless they had had another meeting or confrontation later in the night? Tears could stem from sorrow, Dorothy thought, but also from guilt or fear.

Whether the reader checks the blurb on the back of the book or not, I am surprised to discover that I think page 69 would help the reader jump right into the story without being confusing. Important characters make an appearance, and the interactions between them are good clues to possible suspects in the murder, and this small piece of the story gives an insight to an important theme in the novel. The dancing of two teenage girls at a fancy gala ball has enraged one girl’s father. What was really happening between the two girls? What made the father so angry? The incident was witnessed by Dorothy L Sayers, one of the famous authors (Queens of Crime) hosting the ball, and she connects it to a memory of her youth. This gives her an emotional reaction to the incident, which brings on thoughts and suspicions. The scene is a good example of what the book is like, a queen of crime observing people, their actions and reactions, and how the information may relate to the death of the victim. The thought process that pushes the plot forward and asks the reader do their own investigation to help figure out the end. Another insight on page 69 is that even though this story takes place in 1938, it could just as well have happened today. That’s another important aspect to the story; the political and philosophical parallels from 1938 to now.

Visit Rosanne Limoncelli's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Queens of Crime.

--Marshal Zeringue

"White Line Fever"

KC Jones is a screenwriter-turned-novelist currently living in western Washington. When not writing, he can be found watching movies, playing video and board games, or enjoying nature—whenever it isn’t raining.

He graduated from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas with a degree in film production. His first published novel, Black Tide, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a first novel.

Jones applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, White Line Fever, and reported the following:

Page 69 of White Line Fever is the title page for Part 2. Maybe not the greatest indicator of what's in the rest of the book. But at the same time, the design team chose art for these breaks that slowly shift to reveal a full picture over the course of the story. On page 69, we see a night sky entirely unpolluted by city lights, so that the galaxy is clearly visible. Underneath that, a black, lightless forest silhouetted against the nightscape, the trees blurred slightly from the apparent motion of the viewer. In the foreground, a road is just hinted at, also blurred by the viewer’s speedy passing through this place. It's an eerie shot, even without context. It suggests being chased, or moving quickly toward somewhere else. It hints of a road trip gone awry, a spooky forest, and cosmic horror, which sums up the vibes of this book pretty well. It’s at least probably enough to get a browser to turn the page, which is a much better sampling of things to come, as the main character notes the strangeness of the woods and the road as she and her friends drive through it, before her head smacks the window glass and shocks her out of the highway hypnosis-induced trance she hadn’t even realized came over her. It's just the first time that this road is going to get into her head, and things are only going to get worse for the four friends from here. This road is only fifteen miles long, but it's going to take these characters to places they hoped never to go again.

Visit KC Jones's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Beauty of the End"

Lauren Stienstra is an American novelist who enjoys writing about the intersection of duty, science, and humanity. She believes that fiction can encourage readers to re-think their roles, responsibilities, and relationships in our own present world.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Stienstra now lives, works, and writes around Washington, D.C. She holds advanced degrees in science and public policy from the George Washington and Johns Hopkins universities, and trained in creative writing at UCLA.

Stienstra applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Beauty of the End, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Three birds, one stone. By joining the Mendelia, I’d get to leave Hawley. I’d get to stay with my sister. I’d surrender my ovaries and everyone would stop bothering me about kids.

It was almost too good to be true.

“There’s just one last thing,” I said. “What are we going to tell Mom?”

Albeit brief, this page offers a great summary of The Beauty of the End up to page 69, and also hints at the forthcoming tension. A reader skipping to this page will be left with several pressing questions—one of which is particularly chilling. What is the Mendelia? (It should carry an ominous undertone.) Why does the narrator want to leave Hawley? And most perplexingly, why does she think surrendering her ovaries is a good thing? The answers to these three questions are central to my main character’s motivation, and they are all tidily encapsulated here.

As far as the unfolding drama, it’s clear the main character is speaking to someone—but who? Based on the weight of internal dialogue, the reader will likely (and correctly) suspect that the conversational partner is someone significant. Then comes the reveal: they share a mother. Even more intriguingly, they are conspiring to keep something from her. One of these siblings has an something to hide—a major plot point in the book.

From this short excerpt, the reader will probably surmise that there is something sinister afoot. While the opening chapters gradually build this atmosphere, this passage distills it quite effectively. The only missing piece is a direct reference to the precipitating crisis—the discovery of the species-ending genetic flaw.

Visit Lauren Stienstra's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Beauty of the End.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Immortal Woman"

Su Chang is a Chinese-Canadian writer. Born and raised in Shanghai, she is the daughter of a former (reluctant) Red Guard leader. Her fiction has been recognized in Prairie Fire’s Short Fiction Contest, the Canadian Authors’ Association (Toronto) National Writing Contest, the ILS/Fence Fiction Contest, the Masters Review’s Novel Excerpt Contest, the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Fiction Contest, among others.

Chang applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, The Immortal Woman, and reported the following:

Page 69 of my book is distinctively different from most other pages in that it recounts, in a satirical and brisk manner, a series of factual occurrences at the end of the Cultural Revolution (the downfall of the Gang of Four and Mao’s handpicked heir, and the rise of President Deng Xiaoping). This page might have been the most non-fictional of the entire novel! As such, I’m afraid the Page 69 Test doesn’t quite apply to my book. The page serves as a bridge between two narrative scenes. I’m much more interested in the human story than recounting history. Browsing this page alone wouldn’t tell the reader much about the book, other than the fact that part of it is set in the 1970s China. However, I think history buffs would find it intriguing. And even for those who didn’t pick up the book for its history, I hope I’ve found an entertaining and humorous way to compress a period of complex history into one single page and to set the stage for the ensuing human drama.

Learn more about the book and author at Su Chang's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Immortal Woman.

--Marshal Zeringue

"I Am the Swarm"

Hayley Chewins is the critically acclaimed author of The Turnaway Girls and The Sisters of Straygarden Place. She grew up in Cape Town, and now lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, with her husband and daughter. She is the singer and songwriter for the alt-pop band Eight Thousand Birds.

Chewins applied the Page 69 Test to her YA debut, I Am the Swarm, and reported the following:

Page 69 of I Am the Swarm contains the following poem:

“Did something happen? With Mamma?”

Dad shakes his head.

Meaning: Having you looked around lately?

Meaning: Where have you been these past few months?

Meaning: Don’t ask me to tell you. Don’t ask me to say it out loud.

If you were browsing in a bookshop and you opened my book to page 69, you’d get a good idea of the style of the prose. The spareness of Nell’s voice is evident here, and so is the use of white space. Quite a lot to get from 39 words!

What page 69 leaves out, though, is the strange, irrational magic that the book contains, which is a huge part of the story. So I’d say the test is partly successful, but the reader might be surprised a few pages later when Nell’s mother is suddenly seventeen again, or when Nell herself wakes up after a nightmare to find her bedroom floor sticky with black beetles.

What page 69 does really well, though, is give the reader of sense of all the silence in the book. I Am the Swarm is, in part, a story about all the things we can’t say to one another, and page 69 is a good example of that theme coming through.

Visit Hayley Chewins's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bitterfrost"

Bryan Gruley is the Edgar-nominated author of six novels – Purgatory Bay, Bleak Harbor, the Starvation Lake Trilogy, and his most recent, Bitterfrost - and one award-winning work of nonfiction. A lifelong journalist, he shared in The Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He lives in northern lower Michigan with his wife, Pamela, where he can be found playing hockey, singing in his band, or spending time with his children and grandchildren.

Gruley applied the Page 69 Test to Bitterfrost and reported the following:

Page 69 of Bitterfrost finds us in the home of the protagonist, Jimmy Baker, as he’s being visited by police detective Garth Klimmek. Some hours earlier, police had found the body of a man beaten to death. Klimmek is here because the house was visible from the scene of the crime; he thought the occupant might have seen something. The detective had actually stopped by earlier, when Jimmy wasn’t home, and saw some things that made him even more curious. As Klimmek is asking Jimmy about the night before, Bitterfrost police officer Paul Sylvester arrives with some important information.

The page is a nice microcosm of the novel because it embodies a central tension: Jimmy’s violent past and his difficulty remembering what happened the night before, when he came upon the now-dead man and his friend at a local bar. Klimmek treads lightly, asking simple questions in a friendly way, playing the proverbial good cop. At the same time, the detective has in the past day researched Jimmy’s troubling history: “In (Klimmek’s) line of work, he’d encountered plenty of people … capable of inflicting lethal violence using nothing but their hands. But he had to wonder how this hometown hero, the second child in a seemingly normal Bitterfrost family, had become such a brute.”

When Klimmek steps outside to speak with Officer Paul Sylvester, he hears—though Jimmy does not—that an anonymous caller who heard about the killing on the news has alerted police that “a couple of Detroit guys were raising hell at the Lost Loon last night, might have run into trouble.” By now the reader knows Jimmy was at the Loon, where he ran into two Detroit guys and decided afterward that he might not go directly home. Combined with Jimmy’s faulty memory, the scene heightens the reader’s suspicions of Jimmy’s culpability. The scene hints at the questions that will run through the reader’s mind throughout Bitterfrost: Could Jimmy have done it? Did Jimmy do it? Why doesn’t he remember anything that might acquit him? Is he simply lying?

Answers are provided a couple of hundred pages later.

Learn more about the book and author at Bryan Gruley's website.

The Page 69 Test: Starvation Lake.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Tree.

The Page 69 Test: Bleak Harbor.

The Page 69 Test: Purgatory Bay.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Falls to Pieces"

Douglas Corleone is the international bestselling author of Gone Cold, Payoff, and Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Equation, as well as the acclaimed Kevin Corvelli novels, the Simon Fisk international thrillers, and the stand-alone courtroom drama The Rough Cut. Corleone’s debut novel, One Man’s Paradise, won the 2009 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award and was a finalist for the 2011 Shamus Award for Best First Novel. A former New York City criminal defense attorney, Corleone now resides in Honolulu, where he is currently at work on his next novel.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Falls to Pieces, and reported the following:

In the ARC (Advance Reader’s Copy) of Falls to Pieces, page 69 contains only five lines since it ends a chapter. I thought I’d be writing about how the novel fails the test, but when I read the page, I realized it passes.

The scene takes place in a lava tube (a natural cave formed by lava) just off the hiking trail at a Maui National Park, where Kati’s fiancé Eddie has gone missing. Kati and her fiancé’s law partner Noah are searching for a missing walking stick, which may hold the key to Eddie’s disappearance.

The page brings a satisfying conclusion to the suspense built up in the chapter, which would give a new reader a fair idea of the story. These few lines also raise a startling new question, urging the reader to ignore the clock and read one more chapter.

(Actually, the next chapter is in Kati’s daughter Zoe’s point of view, so readers are just going to have to read two. Tomorrow morning, we’ll all just need to grab an extra cup of coffee.)

Learn more about the book and author at Douglas Corleone's website.

The Page 69 Test: Good as Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Payoff.

The Page 69 Test: Gone Cold.

My Book, The Movie: Gone Cold.

Writers Read: Douglas Corleone (August 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne"

Ron Currie is the author of four novels and one collection of short stories. He has won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into fifteen languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. He lives in Portland, Maine and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program.

Currie applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne introduces readers to the character of The Man, a ghoul in the tradition of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. The Man is on his way to Waterville, Maine, where he intends to confront the novel's heroine, Babs Dionne, and take away the drug business she's been running for the last thirty years:

Not, understand, that The Man was in any hurry. In point of fact, he never hurried, even when going extremely fast. He did not experience urgency the way normal people experienced urgency. His pulse rarely rose above sixty (forty if he was sitting still). He'd never had a need for antiperspirant. Not once in his life had he suffered the stress-induced cortisol hangover that characterized modern life for most people. Perhaps this was genetic. Whatever the reason, his autonomic nervous system remained dark and dormant in any situation when the average person's would be screaming five alarms, pulling every hormonal and cardiovascular lever to prepare the body for mortal threat real or imagined. It just didn't register for him, and never had. He could recognize stress or peril intellectually, but his body refused to respond. Not only did this explain the fact that he was capable of only one mood--namely, cheerful impassiveness--but it also made The Man 100 percent indifferent to the fear and pain and hopes of other people.

This is an excellent representation of the whole of the novel: spooky, funny in a cockeyed kind of way, and also menacing and deadly serious all at once.

Unfortunately page 69 doesn't cover The Man's backstory, which follows immediately after and shows us how he came to understand his calling as a cartel enforcer. Oddly enough, he was in cosmetology school at the time, training to be a hairdresser, and he experienced something, while learning the fine art of straight-shaving, that clued him in to the fact that he was well-suited for the kind of work he does when we meet him.

Learn more about the book and author at Ron Currie's website.

The Page 69 Test: God Is Dead.

My Book, The Movie: God Is Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Everything Matters!.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Ends of Things"

Sandra Chwialkowska is a television writer and producer who splits her time between Los Angeles and Toronto. Most recently, she served as writer and co–executive producer on the Golden Globe–nominated ABC series Alaska Daily, created by Oscar-winning writer Tom McCarthy and starring two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank. Chwialkowska holds a BA in literature from Yale.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Ends of Things, her first novel, and reported the following:

On page 69 of the paperback, Laura describes her former best friend Chloe’s curated social media presence, and this touches on one of my novel’s key themes—appearance vs reality. The novel is concerned with how things look vs how things really are, what we think we are supposed to want from life vs what we really want. Social media allows Chloe to present an image of herself that is inauthentic, and this foments in Laura a lot of anxiety. When Laura learns that Diana, the solo female traveler that she becomes obsessed with, has no social media presence at all, it underscores Laura’s internal struggle—the yearning to abide by social norms in order to belong (like Chloe) vs the desire to step outside of those norms and be unconstrained and free (like Diana).

Visit Sandra Chwialkowska's website.

Q&A with Sandra Chwialkowska.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Mailman"

Andrew Welsh-Huggins, a son of the Finger Lakes and now longtime Ohio resident, is the Shamus, Derringer, and International Thriller Writers-award nominated author of 10 mystery novels and two nonfiction books, and editor of a short-story anthology

His latest novel, The Mailman, is a Library Journal pick of the month. Publishers Weekly said of the thriller: “With full-throttle pacing from start to finish, this will have Jack Reacher fans hoping Carter is back in action soon.”

Welsh-Huggins applied the Page 69 Test to The Mailman and reported the following:

For The Mailman, the Page 69 Test locates the narrative in media res with suggestions of secrets being kept and hints of drama to come.

The top of the page finds my protagonist, freelance courier Mercury Carter, quizzing Glenn Vaughn, a passenger in Carter’s Chevy Suburban, about Glenn’s work for Xeneconn, an Indianapolis pharmaceutical company. Xeneconn has been in the news lately as it works on medication to treat addiction. Carter is struck by Glenn’s reluctance bordering on hostility to discuss his work.

Glenn interrupts Carter and asks him to clarify something Glenn overheard Carter say in a phone conversation a minute earlier about Chicago. Carter confirms the city is their destination and Glenn appears to suffer a panic attack. Glenn reveals that his teenage daughter, Abby, attends a private boarding school in Chicago.

“What if they…?” Glenn says as the page ends.

The backdrop for this conversation took place less than two hours earlier when Carter interrupted a home invasion at the suburban Indianapolis house that Glenn, an attorney, shares with his wife, Rachel Stanfield, also an attorney. In the seconds before Carter rang the doorbell with a delivery for Rachel, a four-person team led by an uncompromising brute called Finn was on the cusp of torturing Glenn and Rachel to pry information from them about a woman Rachel’s firm is in litigation with.

As Rachel begs for their lives, telling Finn she’s divulged all the information she has, Glenn blurts out that he has millions of dollars he can give the men. The revelation shocks Rachel even in the depths of her fear.

Carter has never missed a delivery and will do just about anything to keep that streak alive, a motto he unleashes when he realizes what’s going on inside Rachel and Glenn’s house, to the detriment of Finn and his gang. Despite Carter’s best efforts, however, Finn and company escape with Rachel as a hostage and head to Chicago. Unbeknownst to them, Carter—with Glenn in tow—is in close pursuit.

The plot of The Mailman is transparent from the start: can Carter rescue Rachel in time? Page 69 reveals layers of that dilemma and raises questions about how well Rachel and Glenn know each other, with their lives and their daughter’s life at stake.

Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.

My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.

Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (April 2023).

My Book, The Movie: The End of the Road.

The Page 69 Test: The End of the Road.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (November 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Sick to Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Map to Paradise"

Susan Meissner is a USA Today bestselling novelist with more than a million books in readers’ hands and in eighteen languages. Her critically acclaimed and award-winning works of historical fiction have been named to numerous lists including Publishers Weekly’s annual roster of 100 best books, Library Reads Top Picks, Real Simple's annual tally of best books, Booklist’s Top Ten, Book of the Month, and Amazon Editors’ Pick. Her newest title is A Map to Paradise, a novel about belonging, friendship, and finding one’s way home, and is set in California during the early and scary years of the Cold War. Susan lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and yellow Lab, Winston.

Meissner applied the Page 69 Test to A Map to Paradise and came up with following:

From page 69:

“For heaven’s sake,” Melanie said in an exasperated voice. “Elwood is not some kind of madman who can’t handle seeing a stranger! He just doesn’t go outside. And it’s not a disturbance to ask someone if there’s anything you can do for them.”

So on the fourth afternoon, and while June was sitting on the couch with pages of Elwood’s current screenplay to proofread, Eva did attempt to make contact from the hall side of his bedroom door, behind which she heard the sound of a radio playing and the whirring of an oscillating fan. She tapped on the door as lightly as she could and said softly, “Mr. Blankenship? Is there anything I can get for you? Mr. Blankenship?”

There’d been no answer.

With a trembling hand and a whispered prayer she’d tried the doorknob. It would not turn.

In this little snippet from A Map to Paradise, Melanie Cole, a blacklisted actress hiding out in 1956 Malibu, is worried about the agoraphobic screenwriter who lives next door. She hasn’t seen Elwood in a while and she’s worried that June Blankenship, his sister-in-law and live-in caregiver, isn’t being truthful when Melanie asks about him. Melanie has tasked her housekeeper, an Eastern European immigrant named Eva Kruse who lost everything and everyone in WW2, to find out if Elwood is okay. Eva has the means to do it as Melanie has loaned her housekeeper to June for a little while June recovers from a strained back. We see in this scene on page 69 that Eva is unable to do what Melanie has directed her to do—which is make sure Elwood is all right.

This scene is not exactly pivotal to the story’s overall takeaway, but it is absolutely essential to understanding what will compel these three women to become allies to each other. They have nothing in common except the loss or imminent loss of all that defines them, all that makes them feel safe and secure and believing they are right where they belong.

This is a story about three women all facing some kind of displacement. Melanie the actress has been caught up in the Red Scare that was rampant in Hollywood in the 1950s and she’s been ousted from the only career she’s ever wanted. Eva the housekeeper is one of the eleven million Displaced Persons made homeless by World War 2 and she has also lied on her immigration papers. She is pretending to be Polish, when in fact she was born in Russia. And June stands to lose her home, her livelihood and the man she secretly loves if he dies. And he’s not well.

It's a story that explores what a person will do to get back what was taken from them or prevent it from being taken in the first place. It’s about imagining there could be a map that will lead you back to what you once had.

If only it were that easy.

Visit Susan Meissner's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Susan Meissner & Bella.

My Book, The Movie: Stars Over Sunset Boulevard.

My Book, The Movie: A Bridge Across the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: A Bridge Across the Ocean.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Year of the War.

The Page 69 Test: Only the Beautiful.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Dollhouse Academy"

Margarita Montimore is the author of The Dollhouse Academy, Asleep from Day, Acts of Violet, and Oona Out of Order, a USA Today bestseller and Good Morning America Book Club pick.

After receiving a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, she worked for over a decade in publishing and social media before focusing on the writing dream full-time. Born in Soviet Ukraine and raised in Brooklyn, she currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and dog.

Montimore applied the Page 69 Test to The Dollhouse Academy and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Everyone keeps warning me about how I shouldn’t get used to things the way they are now, how much harder it’s going to get,” I say. “I’m not scared off that easily.”

“I’m not trying to scare you off, only prepare you. A lot of people think they can handle it but break down after the first few weeks. The commitment it takes, the toll it takes . . . You don’t know until you live through it.”

The excerpt above is from a conversation between Ramona, the main character, and Mason, who’s worked at the Dollhouse Academy for a number of years. It takes place when Ramona is still a new trainee and still dazzled by the opportunity to study performing arts at an exclusive, secretive boarding school that has produced some of the biggest stars in showbiz in recent years. While Ramona is hardworking and determined to succeed, she also has no idea of the darker forces at play in the Dollhouse Academy.

This passage hints at something unsettling on the fringes, and that undercurrent of dark uncertainty runs throughout the story. The exchange between Ramona and Mason also conveys some of the story’s central themes, particularly those of ambition and the cost of making your dreams a reality. Ramona and her best friend Grace enter the Dollhouse Academy unaware of its unorthodox methods and sinister secrets. The two women have no way of being prepared for what will actually be demanded of them and how their friendship will be tested as a result. As they discover what’s really happening behind the scenes, they’ll need to decide how much they’re willing to sacrifice in their pursuit of stardom.

While page 69 of The Dollhouse Academy gives readers a taste of the overall story, it doesn’t necessarily convey that the book evolves into something stranger and a bit more surreal than a more conventional dark academia novel.

Visit Margarita Montimore's website.

The Page 69 Test: Oona Out of Order.

The Page 69 Test: Acts of Violet.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Everybody Says It's Everything"

Xhenet Aliu’s novel, Brass, was awarded the biennial Townsend Prize in 2020, the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year First Novel Prize, was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, and was long-listed for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Book Prize. Numerous media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Simple, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, named Brass a 2018 best book of the year. Previously, her debut story collection, Domesticated Wild Things, and Other Stories won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction. Aliu’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Glimmer Train, Hobart, LitHub, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and a fellowship from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, among other awards. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Aliu applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Everybody Says It's Everything, and reported the following:

Ah, on page 69, Drita spends a lonely Saturday night doing a little internet sleuthing:

The hits weren’t related to her brother, but some other Petrit DiMeo. They must have been, because the guy they referred to was some kind of a guerrilla soldier, somebody who’d signed up for something called the Kosovo Liberation Army. The articles were essentially duplicates of each other, reprints from a single wire service, but Drita clicked through them all, not because she thought she’d found her brother but because each tap killed a few more seconds, and it was novel to think of a parallel Petrit DiMeo out there in the world, one with convictions and a sense of purpose beyond scoring his next pack of Kools. Kosovo had been popping up in the news lately, but Drita assumed it was mostly because the news had to come up with something to fill the airwaves after Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, not because anyone actually knew or cared what was going on in a part of the world that not even the Peace Corps got involved with.

But there was a human interest angle for the news to pick up on: a bunch of exiles and immigrant kids in the U.S. had volunteered to fight for the independence of their homeland, or their parents’ homeland, a place they maybe visited once or twice or, for some, never at all. One of the pieces had a photo to accompany it, and strangely, the photo showed a guy who looked a lot like her brother, if she could imagine her brother clean-shaven and wearing camouflage. And stranger still, the caption called this doppelgänger Petrit DiMeo, which at first amused Drita, and then, after she clicked on the photo to expand it in her screen, made her swat her empty wineglass to the floor.

This was no doppelgänger. That was Drita’s brother, Petrit DiMeo, staring back at her in black and white, his thick hair buzzed the way he wore it for the three months he played Pop Warner football in middle school.

Not to toot my own horn here, because it’s entirely accidental, but page 69 is a pretty darn perfect distillation of the main conflicts and themes of the book: the relationship between Drita and her estranged twin brother Petrit, a troubled young man who’s suddenly found a cause; and the twins’ Albanian identities, which, as adoptees raised outside of the culture in a working-class Connecticut city, they experience very differently. Beyond that, with the references to Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial and the Kosovo War, it clearly situates the reader in a specific time–early 1999, to be precise. What you can’t specifically tell from this page is that Drita isn’t Google-stalking here, because Google was barely a blip on the digital radar in 1999. Nope, she relied on some of the free AOL dial-up hours every sentient human received via CD-ROM in the late 90s. One of the most fun parts of writing this book for me was re-experiencing AOL’s homepages and chatrooms, which I did through a combination of the Wayback Machine and other cached screenshots, along with my own shoddy memory. Truthfully, I wasn’t an early adopter of AOL and never really went deep into Chat life, even as a lonely teenager who should’ve jumped at the chance to engage with other lonely teenagers (and the occasional, or probably frequent, middle-age man pretending to be a teenager). Drita was my chance at a late-90s AOL do-over.

Visit Xhenet Aliu's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Banker"

Peter Colt was born in Boston, MA in 1973 and moved to Nantucket Island shortly thereafter. He is a 1996 graduate of the University of Rhode Island and a 24-year veteran of the Army Reserve with deployments to Kosovo and Iraq. He is a police officer in a New England city and the married father of two boys.

Colt applied the Page 69 Test to his new Andy Roark mystery, The Banker, and reported the following:

If a curious person, say in a bookstore picked up The Banker and randomly turned to page 69 to see if the writing grabbed them here's what they'd get. Vietnam veteran, former Special Forces Sergeant, former Boston Cop, Andy Roark is in Amesbury Massachusetts surveilling a bank in the spring of 1986. Weeks earlier he was hired to figure out which of three suspects had been embezzling funds from it. Roark quit the case because it was boring. Then the bank was robbed and one of the suspects was murdered. The timing is too coincidental and Roark decides he's back on the case, even if the Bank's President doesn't want to hire him back. Page 69 finds Roark parked outside the bank as one of the two remaining embezzlement suspects leaves for lunch. He follows her into a deli where he has a discussion with her.

Page 69 is a good snapshot of what the book is about. Andy Roark is doing classic PI stuff, tailing and bracing a suspect. There is enough of the backstory on page 69 to give the reader some idea what the book is about. There's certainly enough description to hold a reader's attention. There is enough inner monologue for the reader, if they are new to the series to get a sense if they like the protagonist, don't call him a hero, Andy Roark.

Visit Peter Colt's website.

My Book, The Movie: Back Bay Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Back Bay Blues.

Q&A with Peter Colt.

The Page 69 Test: Death at Fort Devens.

My Book, The Movie: Death at Fort Devens.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (June 2022).

My Book, The Movie: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Ambassador.

The Page 69 Test: The Judge.

My Book, The Movie: The Judge.

Writers Read: Peter Colt (May 2024).

Writers Read: Peter Colt.

My Book, The Movie: The Banker.

--Marshal Zeringue

"At the Island's Edge"

C. I. Jerez, who has a blend of Irish, Puerto Rican, and Cuban parentage, grew up near El Paso’s Mexican border experiencing a true cultural amalgamation. After graduating from the University of Texas at El Paso, she commissioned as a signal officer in the US Army and rose to the rank of major before transitioning out of the military. She holds an MBA from Webster University and a doctorate in international business from Liberty University. When not writing, she serves as cofounder and vice president for Ashire Technologies & Services Inc., a cybersecurity firm specializing in securing federal information systems. She lives in central Florida.

Jerez applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, At the Island's Edge, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Salud,” Dolores and Eli reply in unison as she pulls out the seat beside me.

“Can I offer you something to eat?” Eli asks, placing a menu in front of us. “A little food in your belly might be a good idea before this one over here,” he says, pointing in my direction, “ends up three sheets to the wind.”

I give him my best give-me-a-break face, and Dolores smiles politely, but she doesn’t understand Eli’s southern colloquialisms.

The rest of the page describes the connection between Dolores and Eli through a fellow soldier who was from Puerto Rico and passed away.

I think page 69 provides readers with an excellent example of how I wanted to take two unique cultures that were, in theory, very different and weave them together in a natural and harmonious manner. This book takes a unique approach to a Latino-based setting by showing the reader the similarities within the unique American culture. This Page 69 Test also worked well for my book because you get a scene with three very important people in the novel: the protagonist, who is already showing her affinity for drinking away her troubles, her cousin, who has a penchant for drawing attention, and the outsider from South Carolina who has set up his new life on the island. The novel weaves these three characters together throughout the story and their lives do collide in ways we didn’t expect. I believe page 69 does a great job of foreshadowing those connections but also providing a firsthand account of the cultural intricacies in this book and how a traditional American who has never been to Puerto Rico may see or experience the island, and how some of the islanders may react to them. I believe this page also shows the welcoming spirit of the Puerto Rican people, while highlighting the sweetness and often laid-back lifestyle they tend to enjoy on “island time.”

Visit C.I. Jerez's website.

My Book, The Movie: At the Island's Edge.

--Marshal Zeringue