"Always the Quiet Ones"

Jamie Lee Sogn is a Filipina American author of adult thriller novels. She grew up in Olympia, Washington, studied Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Washington and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Oregon School of Law.

She is a "recovering attorney" who writes contracts by day and (much more exciting) fiction by night. While she has lived in Los Angeles, New York City, and even Eugene, Oregon, she calls the Pacific Northwest and Seattle home.

Her debut novel, Salthouse Place, was an Amazon First Reads and was long listed for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize.

Sogn applied the Page 69 Test to her second novel, Always The Quiet Ones, and shared the following:

From page 69:

“As I was leaving, I thought I saw you and your friend talking to him by his car. Didn’t look like you guys were still fighting is all.”

I shake my head. “I honestly don’t remember; it was so late.” I shake my mouse and pretend to be distracted by something on my screen. “Greg, I have to work.”

“Sure, yeah, I’ll just . . .” He leaves and shuts the door behind him. As soon as I see him disappear around the corner, I go for my phone.

Looking in my contacts, I find her and begin a new text.

What the hell happened last night? I search and easily find a news article about Landon. I send it to Kelli.

The reply doesn’t come immediately. It doesn’t come at all. For a moment, I panic and wonder if she gave me a fake number. She was a stranger, after all. How could I have been so stupid?

I stare at my computer screen and wish I could go back to the person I was twenty-four hours earlier.

I get no work done. The office is like a tomb. There’s none of the usual banter or the charged hustle. We’re all in shock, and sure, he was an asshole, but we are all in mourning. I stay in my office and only see Greg pass by once more; he avoids looking at me.

I open my Uber app and look at the history. No rides home last night. Maybe Kelli or Landon ordered the car for me. No texts or photos reveal anything either. I go to the Saul Group’s website and look at the associate directory. I realize I don’t even remember Kelli’s last name or the department she works in; I scroll slowly through the list of all associates and don’t see a single Kelli listed. But it’s possible the website isn’t up to date; I know the BCC site still lists interns from last summer. I go to LinkedIn next and search for Kellis in the greater Seattle area working at the Saul Group. Still no results.

The Page 69 Test works remarkably well for this book! On this page, the browser meets the main character, Bea, the morning after an eventful night out took a fateful turn. Feeling mistreated by her toxic male boss, Bea is beginning to feel as if she’s never going to get the promotion she’s been working towards. So after meeting a woman at a nightclub, Kelli, and bonding over shared experiences of being women in the male dominated field of law, Bea and her new friend joke about making a deal to murder each other’s boss. Then, Bea wakes up to some shocking news. Her hated boss has been found dead. Bea can’t remember anything from the night before and she fears the worst.

On page 69, we see her arriving at work the morning after her night out with Kelli, her new friend and confidant… and possible accomplice, but to what, Bea isn’t quite sure yet. Unsure yet if she has anything to feel guilty about, Bea can’t help but feel as if all eyes are on her. Her mind is racing through the scenarios of the night before and who could have possibly seen her and Kelli. Then she begins to realize she doesn’t know anything about Kelli at all. Bea is horrified to think that the woman she knows as “Kelli” might not even exist. Bea might be totally alone and a suspect in her boss’s death.

The test works so well because this page is more or less the setup and conflict for the larger mystery of the novel, that is, who exactly is Kelli and who killed Bea’s boss? And how does Bea fit in? I would hope the browser reading this page would want to continue to find out what happened next. Because it turns out that Bea has a past that makes Kelli’s friendship, real or imagined, triggering in of itself. Even though she is the protagonist, she’s not a perfect character either and hides some secrets of her own. But that’s for another page…

Visit Jamie Lee Sogn's website.

Q&A with Jamie Lee Sogn.

My Book, The Movie: Salthouse Place.

The Page 69 Test: Salthouse Place.

--Marshal Zeringue