"First Do No Harm"

SJ Rozan, a native New Yorker, is the author of twenty novels and eight dozen short stories. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards for Best Novel and the Edgar for Best Short Story. She’s also the recipient of the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award and has received Life Achievement Awards from both the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Rozan applied the Page 69 Test to First Do No Harm, the newest title in the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery series, with the following results:

Page 69 of First Do No Harm is the start of Chapter 12, so it's just over half a page long; but it does give a good idea of the book. There's description:

I could see a puzzle-piece of sky squeezed between the canopy over the driveway and the high-rises across the avenue.

dialogue between my two leads, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith:

(Bill:) ...it might be a great time for us to spelunk in the east basement.

(Lydia:) Spelunk. You're a show-off, you know that?

and a new plan being made that will lead into the rest of the scene:

(Lydia:) ...You're right about the east basement, though. He pretty much told us it's got no security...

These are elements -- description, dialogue, action -- that I like to keep in balance and page 69 is a good example of how I try to do it. I use description to anchor the viewer in time and place; but while place is important to me, pure description ("There was a canopy over the driveway") is dry and tells the reader nothing about the person doing the describing. In this case "puzzle-piece" is a word Lydia might not have used if the case weren't so confusing. I always try to make an element do more than one job; for example, in this dialogue -- and I use dialogue to tell as much of the story as possible -- Bill suggests a course of action, but in a way that also shows a facet of his relationship with Lydia.

Throughout the book in different places one or another of the elements will predominate, but to the extent that I'm successful in using each element to comment on the others, the book will be textured and will move forward in ways that will both surprise readers, and keep them interested.

Visit S.J. Rozan's website.

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Writers Read: S. J. Rozan (November 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Mayors of New York.

--Marshal Zeringue