"The Killing Plains"

Sherry Rankin grew up in New Jersey where she became an early and avid reader of mystery fiction. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and currently lives in Abilene, Texas where she has taught writing and literature at a local university for twenty years.

She has written scholarly articles and worked as an editorial consultant, manuscript reader and ghostwriter, but her avocation has always been creative writing.

Her novel, Strange Fire, was shortlisted for the 2017 Daniel Goldsmith First Novel Prize and won the 2017 CWA Debut Dagger Award.

Rankin applied the Page 69 Test to her debut thriller, The Killing Plains, and reported the following:

The Killing Plains is about Colly Newland, a former Houston detective, who has returned to her late husband’s home town in rural West Texas to solve a murder of which his brother has been accused.

Once there, she finds herself faced with a baffling sequence of killings that she feels morally bound to solve in order to move on with her life.

Colly is grieving a serious personal loss and is rife with inner conflict: she’s a gifted detective who has abandoned law enforcement; she’s widowed and lonely, but not emotionally ready for a new relationship; she has deep regrets about her own failings as a mother and is trying to compensate by parenting her traumatized young grandson; she feels she owes a moral debt to her late husband’s family, but she is repulsed by their wealth and entitlement and wants to cut ties with them once that debt is paid.

Page 69 occurs in the middle of a pivotal chapter in the novel. It takes place at a fireworks stand beside a bleak, lonely West Texas highway. Colly has just found a crucial clue; she has also just faced her first serious setback in the case and discovered, to her horror, that the killer is actively interfering with her investigation in a creepy and unsettling way.

On page 69, Earla Cobb, forensic specialist for the county, shows up on her motorcycle to examine the scene. Page 69 also highlights Colly’s struggle to balance the needs of her grandson, Satchel, with her professional responsibilities—a theme that runs throughout the novel.

While I’m not sure anyone would buy the book on the strength of page 69 alone, it definitely does come at a key plot point and depicts some of the central themes and motifs of the book.

Visit Sherry Rankin's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Killing Plains.

--Marshal Zeringue