Karp became the sole author of the series, which features Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan as members of an of an elite squad sworn to "protect and serve New York's rich and famous." Karp is also the author of five books in the critically acclaimed Lomax and Biggs mystery series, featuring LAPD Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs, who work homicide out of the famed Los Angeles Hollywood Division. For over twenty years Karp has worked closely with the international charity Vitamin Angels, providing tens of millions of mothers and children around the globe with lifesaving vitamins and nutrients.
Karp applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, NYPD Red 8: The 11:59 Bomber, and reported the following:
When you're writing a book about a mad bomber who's running around New York blowing up iconic places every day at 11:59 AM, you better be sure you give the reader what they came for.Visit Marshall Karp's website.
So I was happy to see that on page 69 my two hero NYPD detectives, Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan, have just arrived on the scene of the second bombing — a major department store. The bomb, like the one in the Wall Street subway station the previous day, went off at precisely 11:59 a.m. It’s now clear to the cops (and the reader) that the entire city now knows exactly when the next bomb will explode. They just don’t know where.
It’s not difficult to imagine that millions of people will hunker down at home, and the economic impact on the city will be monumental.
Even though the bomb has already decimated a wide area of the first floor of the store, Page 69 shows the detectives studying the security footage from minutes before the 11:59 explosion. As the time clock in the corner of the screen goes from 11:57 to 11:58, and the seconds slowly tick off to 11:59, the cops see the bomber leave his knapsack near a luggage display and head for the exit. They stand there helpless, knowing that the impending blast will kill everyone in the vicinity. But who? The man admiring a display of crystal bottles? The saleswoman behind a glass counter, a mirrored wall behind her? The little girl who walks into the frame, no mother or father in sight?
Re-reading what I had written, I was confident that page 69 had done exactly what page 69 is supposed to do. Get the reader to turn to page 70.
--Marshal Zeringue