"Things Don’t Break On Their Own"

Sarah Easter Collins is a writer and artist. A mother to a wonderful son, she has worked extensively in the field of education, teaching art in the UK, Botswana, Thailand, and Malawi. Collins now lives on Exmoor with her husband and dogs, where she loves running and wild swimming. She is a graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course.

Collins applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, Things Don’t Break On Their Own, and reported the following:

I love this idea! It turns out that page 69 in Things Don’t Break On Their Own is in fact very slightly different for the UK and the US editions, and personally I think that test works better when applied to the UK edition, so for this exercise, I’m going to work with that.

So here’s what it says on page 69 of the UK edition of Things Don’t Break On Their Own:

I picked up her desk chair and lifted it inside her wardrobe. Then I stood on it and, on tiptoe, felt along the top of the inside frame where there was a tiny gap between the wood and the plaster of the wall, the space she used to stash the notes she lifted from my father’s wallet, rolled up into tight little tubes. Nothing.

I went back to her desk and looked through the jumble of things she’d left on the top of her chest of drawers – the hair ties and clips meant to tame her unruly hair, beads, a peacock feather. A china cat. A felt mouse. She was so messy. There wasn’t an order to any of it. I opened her pink jewellery box, a relic from childhood, and jumped as a small pink plastic ballet dancer sprang up and shuddered into life, turning on its stand to tinny music. Amazing the thing still works, I thought. I listened to the tune, feeling rushed backwards through time as an image filled my mind: my mother one day pretending to be that doll, turning jerkily on the spot with a strange, fixed smile on her face, while Laika and I danced around her, giggling like mad. It was funny, because, as children, we honestly believed our mother was the clumsiest person on earth. She always told us she couldn’t walk through a doorway without accidentally banging into it. Bruises bloomed like flowers on her arms. Silly me, she’d say, when we pulled up the long sleeves she always wore, when we traced their outlines with small fingertips, when we tried to kiss them better.

I snapped the lid shut.

Almost immediately I opened it again. There was something bright in there, something I’d not noticed before: a discarded thing in a child’s jewellery box, just one trinket among many others, easily overlooked.

With slow fingers I lifted out the object and held it up: a tiny silver dolphin, curled into a dive, shaped like a crescent moon. I stretched out the little silver chain. It was broken. The ballerina kept turning.

I’m going to say that for Things Don’t Break On their Own, the Page 69 Test works! What would a reader learn from reading page 69? This: that a young girl, Laika, is missing and that her sister does not know what happened, but that she has been driven by both loss and suspicion to be going through her sister’s bedroom, looking for clues. She describes her missing sister as untidy and unordered, perhaps suggesting that she herself is not. We learn that Laika had messy hair which, as later becomes apparent, is something that has some significance. We also learn that the missing sister was not undisposed to a little light theft (an astute reader might ask why.) There are also two big reveals. The first of these is that their mother has evidently been a victim of domestic violence, and that she protected her daughters from the full knowledge/horror of this when they were small children, by pretending to be clumsy. The second is the discovery of a broken necklace with a tiny silver dolphin, which is also highly significant. So to conclude, everything contained on page 69 is highly relevant to the whole book, and not just to the story but to its underlying themes. Even the tiny ballerina in the music box is thematically relevant, a woman trapped and turning on the spot.

I must admit I’m completely fascinated by this snapshot, and how well it has worked, and I know I will definitely find myself turning to a book’s page 69 in the future, just to see what it contains.

Visit Sarah Easter Collins's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Come Shell or High Water"

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Come Shell or High Water, and reported the following:

Page 69 in Come Shell or High Water is part of a getting-to-know-you type conversation between two characters. Here’s the page:

“The shell is older. I was a merchant by vocation and a conchologist by avocation.”

“A shell scientist? That’s similar to my profession. I specialize in freshwater mussels. But not just the shells. The animals that create them, too.” Wait, did I believe this conversation? What were the odds of a conchologist ghost appearing to a malacologist concussion victim?

“Fancy that connection,” he said. “I trust your experience with shells is happier than mine. I lost my life in my pursuit.”

“Oh! I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said with a somber half bow. “I died pursuing this magnificent helmet shell.” He reached into the case—through the glass—and stroked the shell. “The situation gives new meaning to the word attached, for I now seem to be attached to the shell.”

“Do you mind if I ask how old you were?”

“Thirty-seven. I was the younger of three brothers who left our father’s home in Rhuddlan to seek our fortunes.”

In defense of the insensitive question I asked him next, I had never heard anyone, in real life, say We left our father’s home to seek our fortunes. “To seek your fortunes? Like the three little pigs?”

His face went from confused to annoyed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That wasn’t meant to be an insult, either. It was a reference to a children’s story that might not be as old as you are. Not in its current form, anyway. It’s a fun story. Exciting. It has a wolf.”

“Apology accepted. I like a good literary reference, myself.”

“Did Allen Withrow know about you . . . being here?”

“Oh, yes. Allen and I were great friends. Friends of a philosophical nature, that is, meaning that we enjoyed each other’s company, but often disagreed.”

I’d put my hands in my pockets, and the doorknob was dig- (the last line continues on page 70)

Applying the Page 69 Test, readers will guess they might be in for a ghost story. But the reader also learns that the second person suffered a concussion and isn’t sure the ghost exists. Readers learn several things about the two characters from their exchanges—they have (or had) similar professions, they like literary references, they’re polite. From those observations, and if the ghost is real, the reader might guess this isn’t a horror novel. The two talk about a third person, Allen Withrow, in the past tense. Nothing in their conversation suggests there’s been a crime or murder, though, so unless readers know they picked up a mystery, page 69 alone won’t clue them in.

The second person in the conversation is Maureen Nash. Over the past twenty-four hours, she’s had a bit of a rough time and she doesn’t remember all of it. She knows she arrived on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, at the end of a hurricane. That the park ranger who gave her a lift to the island warned her not to tell anyone about the favor. That she went to the beach . . . and from there her memories are muddled or missing. Except she knows she tripped over a dead body in the woods, somehow ended up unconscious on the floor of the shell shop in Ocracoke Village, and she heard someone with a beautiful tenor singing about drunken sailors. And now, on page 69, she’s met the owner of that tenor, and her life is about to get a little more muddled. Page 69 does catch the flavor of Come Shell or High Water. I also hope it piques a reader’s interest enough to make them want to flip back to page 1 and read all the way through.

Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

My Book, The Movie: Scones and Scoundrels.

The Page 69 Test: Crewel and Unusual.

The Page 69 Test: Heather and Homicide.

Q&A with Molly MacRae.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All This and More"

Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, New York, and Mexico City.

Her second novel, The Cartographers, became a national bestseller, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The Washington Post, and received a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her debut, The Book of M, won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today show and NPR’s On Point.

Shepherd applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, All This and More, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“You’re looking very starry-eyed.” Jo chuckles as she appears and hands her a glass of bubbly. “The victory’s finally hitting you?”

Marsh finally stops staring at the cake and toasts her as nonchalantly as she can manage. “Used up all my steely veneer in court,” she says.

Jo takes an appreciative sip. “I’ll say. I’ve never seen a jury come back so fast in my life. I hadn’t even finished my lunch when we heard they were filing back in, and I had to stuff my face and run. I was still chewing a bite of sandwich as I slid into one of the pews!”

Marsh bursts out laughing as Jo mimes how she tried to hide her mouth as she huddled in the last row of the courtroom earlier that afternoon.

“I can’t imagine what Judge Chopra would have thought if he’d seen me, but I wasn’t going to miss the verdict for anything,” Jo finishes, still chuckling. “I’m so proud of you, Marsh.”

“We all are,” a familiar voice says, and Marsh turns to see Dylan standing behind her.

What’s Dylan doing at Mendoza-Montalvo and Hall? She gasps.

Her left thumb darts furtively forward to stroke her ring finger, to confirm there’s no ring there. How could there be? In this episode, because Marsh put her career first over everything else, her path would have followed Jo’s much more closely than it followed her original life. She and Dylan would have divorced just after Harper was born, and she would have gone on to finish law school and become a lawyer, like she’d always wanted.

Already, her head’s starting to spin a little keeping track of the details. When she and Dylan split up in each reality, how old Harper is, if there was ever a Ren. Marsh is glad that Talia has the Show Bible to make sense of it all.

“Our woman of the hour,” Victor Mendoza-Montalvo declares, then a friendly thump lands on Marsh’s shoulder as he joins their little circle. “Ah, a visitor?” Victor asks, seeing Dylan.

Marsh freezes for a moment, unsure of how to introduce him, because she still doesn’t know who Dylan is to her in this reality, but Dylan is already shaking Victor’s hand.

“I’m Dylan, Marsh’s ex,” he says casually, as if he’s completely comfortable with it.

“Oh, yes,” Victor replies, as if he faintly recollects this information—Marsh’s suspicion that she and Dylan have been divorced a long time must be correct, then. “The two of you have a daughter, right?”

The Page 69 Test works beautifully for All This and More. On this page, our main character Marsh has just jumped back in time to a moment in her past, so she can make a different choice and alter the course of her future life. She’s early in her quest to fix her mistakes, and is still marveling at the sheer miraculousness of this incredible power she’s been granted—is she really here, with the amazing career she’s always wanted, living the perfect life she’s always dreamed of? Can she make it stick for good?

But there are also the first hints of something more sinister going on just under her nose. Why, despite Marsh’s best efforts, do each of her decisions seem like they’re being manipulated by someone or something else? Why is it that every time her situation improves, her estranged husband Dylan’s fate worsens in some way? And why, out of everyone else involved, is he the only one who’s able to tell that the reality they’re all in might not be the original one?

Visit Peng Shepherd's website.

Writers Read: Peng Shepherd (June 2018).

Q&A with Peng Shepherd.

Writers Read: Peng Shepherd (July 2024).

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Darker Mischief"

Derek Milman is the author of Scream All Night and Swipe Right for Murder. A graduate of Yale Drama School, Milman has performed on stages across the country, and appeared in numerous TV shows and films, working with two Academy Award-winning film directors. He lives in Brooklyn.

Milman applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, A Darker Mischief, and reported the following:

Page 69 of A Darker Mischief is the first page of Chapter 8, entitled Black Roses. It's a very good window into the world of the book, its tone, atmosphere, and all its inherent dangers. Browsers would definitely get a good sense of the book from the page. The page places Cal, our MC, in class the following morning after a mysterious and fairly luxe secret society gala, where he really meets and connects to a fellow sophomore transfer student named Luke Kim for the first time. It's the first time the two boys have really actively flirted, and Luke, a troubled street artist, draws his tag on Cal's hand. But it was dark out, so Cal didn't see what it was. In class, sitting across from Luke, Cal examines it and sees it's a dead baby in a womb. This is the first time we actively see Luke getting underneath Cal's skin and piercing his thoughts on a deeper level, parallel to the rush process of the secret society, which is doing the same. As the page progresses we see Cal begin to formulate a dark plan to impress the secret society, The Society of Seven Eyes, or SoSE, since they've urged him to take more risks with his initiation rituals. Being accepted is key to Cal's survival at Essex Academy, since he's a poor kid from a small Mississippi town and has had a hard time fitting into the affluent world of Essex, surrounded by the children of America's elite.

Visit Derek Milman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Scream All Night.

The Page 69 Test: Swipe Right for Murder.

My Book, The Movie: Swipe Right for Murder.

Q&A with Derek Milman.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Curators"

Maggie Nye is the author of The Curators. She is a writer and teacher whose work has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, and the St. Albans Writer in Residence program.

Nye applied the Page 69 Test to The Curators and reported the following:

"Well, if she was going to disobey, she might as well do it right."

That's the last sentence on page 69 of The Curators. On this page, my protagonist, Ana Wulff, has broken off from her group of close-knit friends (the self-named "Felicitous Five") to make good (in her own, meddlesome way) on a dare. Specifically, she is leaving her wealthy, Jewish neighborhood to travel to a poorer, largely Black part of town on the (deeply misguided) suspicion that she will find a “voodoo woman” there to help her pull off a feat of magic.

Sadly, I think if my book were to be judged blind on page 69 alone, the reader would have absolutely no idea what was going on, as the page begins smack in the middle of a remembered (past) conversation with no dialogue tags. Thankfully for you, reader, the whole book is available to you, and you needn't be confused, for there are many pages that precede this one, and many that follow it!

In spite of the Page 69 Test's failure to work super duper accurately. This page (and chapter) marks a significant break in the book. Up until this point, Ana has operated largely inside the collective, as one member of her friend group, but here, we see the beginnings of a fracture. She has struck off along, taking matters into her own hands, and not without some resentment. For example, halfway down the page is the line, "She would make them regret taking her for granted." and on the very next page, she contemplates what her departure from the others means:

There was the word itself, solitude. How very different it was to think herself a solitary adventurer instead of a girl alone. One word imparts “sole” and “only” and “solid,” and the other: “lone,” “lonely,” a frightened girl’s word. Today, she decided, she would not be frightened. (70)

Visit Maggie Nye's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Curators.

Q&A with Maggie Nye.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Over the Edge"

Kathleen Bryant inherited a love of travel from her parents, who bundled her up for her first road trip when she was only six months old. Originally a Midwestern farm girl, she’s spent the past decades thawing out in the West, hiking its deserts and mountains, bouncing along backcountry roads, and sometimes lending a hand at archaeological sites. After writing numerous travel guides and magazine articles about Sedona, Grand Canyon, and the Four Corners, she’s returned to her first love, writing novels. Today, Bryant lives with her musician husband in California, where she continues to seek out new adventures, finding them on hiking trails, at farmers markets, and in the pages of a good book.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Over the Edge, and reported the following:

A reader opening Over the Edge to page 69 would land in the middle of a conversation between two key characters, Jeep guide Del Cooper and Ryan Driscoll, a Forest Service law enforcement officer. The browser test is only partly successful, with hints and misses.

To summarize, on page 69, Del has left work to find Ryan waiting for her outside. They discuss a specific angle of the case, the possibility that Franklin was dealing drugs. She tells Ryan she saw Franklin hand something to the landowner during a heated encounter at a party.

Ryan counters that his main concern is fire danger, especially near homeless encampments on tinder-dry Forest Service land. Franklin, a camper, may have hidden a meth lab somewhere on the forest and may have been selling drugs. Franklin’s companion Jane is in jail, but she’s a flawed witness, as well as a possible suspect.

A reader would need to flip back a few pages to catch up on key plot points: While guiding a tour in a remote canyon, Del found a dead body. Franklin, the victim, was murdered. Two days before her gruesome discovery, Del attended a party celebrating a proposed Forest Service land trade. Once the trade is finalized, the ranch owner and a local developer stand to gain millions.

By page 69, Del has already begun to wonder if Franklin knew something about the trade—knowledge that got him killed. Flipping ahead to page 70, the reader might also pick up on the attraction between Del and Ryan, who was her teenage crush.

But flipping pages back and forth would be cheating, right? Who does that?

Are the clues on page 69 enough to guess the end of the story? Or will readers, like Del, begin to suspect everyone after her witnesses go missing and rumors swirl faster than Sedona’s famed vortexes?

Visit Kathleen Bryant's website.

My Book, The Movie: Over the Edge.

Q&A with Kathleen Bryant.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Man in the Water"

A past President of the Private Eye Writers of America, David Housewright won a prestigious Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and three Minnesota Book Awards for his Rushmore McKenzie and Holland Taylor private eye novels as well as other tales of murder and mayhem in the Midwest.

His new novel is Man in the Water: A McKenzie Novel.

Housewright applied the Page 69 Test to Man in the Water and reported the following::

It turns out that the Page 69 Test works very well in giving the reader an understanding of what my new book is about.

That’s because this is exact part of the book where the protagonist, an unlicensed private investigator named McKenzie, agrees to help Nevaeh, the daughter of Man in the Water – it comes at the end of Chapter Four.

It begins with a warning: “Something else, and this is important – you might not like what I discover. You might learn things you’ll wish you didn’t know. Have you thought of that?”

The page also suggests that Nevaeh’s stepmother and her lawyer might be involved in the death of her father.

“I need you to call the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office. I don’t have the number, but you can probably find it on their website. I want you to call and ask them to send you a complete copy of your father’s autopsy report. I can’t do it myself because I’m not a family member.”

“Bizzy’s lawyer has a copy; I know he does.”

“Let’s not involve either of them for now. We don’t want them getting in the way.”

Nevaeh paused again.

“If my stepmother…” she said.

And it offers a brief insight into the character of McKenzie.

“It’ll be our little secret,” Nevaeh told me.

Secrets, my inner voice said. As if you don’t have enough already.

So, yeah. I’ve taken the Page 69 Test for several other of my novels and the results weren’t that spectacular. But for Man in the Water it works just fine.

Learn more about the book and author at David Housewright's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Kind Word.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Kind Word.

The Page 69 Test: Stealing the Countess.

The Page 69 Test: What the Dead Leave Behind.

The Page 69 Test: First, Kill the Lawyers.

The Page 69 Test: In a Hard Wind.

Q&A with David Housewright.

Writers Read: David Housewright.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Lake County"

Lori Roy’s debut novel, Bent Road, was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Her work has been twice named a New York Times Notable Crime Book and has been included on various “best of” and summer reading lists. Until She Comes Home was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel.

Let Me Die in His Footsteps was included among the top fiction of 2015 by Books-A-Million and named one of the best fifteen mystery novels of 2015 by Oline Cogdill. It also received the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, making Roy the first woman to receive an Edgar Award for both Best First Novel and Best Novel—and only the third person ever to have done so. Gone Too Long was named a People magazine Book of the Week, was named one of the Best Books of Summer 2019, and was excerpted by Oprah magazine.

Roy applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Lake County, and reported the following:

In Lake County, page 69 is only half a page. It is the last page of a chapter, which is told from the point of view of the protagonist’s love interest. In these few paragraphs, we learn Truitt is waiting for a man named Wiley to return with Truitt’s mother. Upon hearing Truitt was in trouble, Wiley stormed out of the house to go find Truitt’s mother without learning the gravity of Truitt’s trouble. Truitt wasn't caught running a bolita game, as Wiley assumed. Truitt had killed a man. Truitt regrets not making Wiley slow down enough to let Truitt tell him the whole story. After waiting several hours, Truitt fears something terrible has happened to Wiley and his mother.

Because page 69 is only half a page, readers dropping into this spot would have little context to understand the plot that is well in motion. That said, the section demonstrates the tension, suspense, and high stakes that drive the novel. Readers would get a sense of the novel's voice and its genre.

The Page 69 Test is an intriguing exercise. In the few paragraphs on that page, I find elements of storytelling that I regularly try to incorporate as I write a novel. We get a ticking clock because Truitt has been waiting for hours. We get escalating stakes because Truitt regrets not giving Wiley the whole story. The story Wiley didn’t get is that Truitt killed a man. Murder has much higher stakes than running a bolita game, which is what Wiley thinks Truitt has done. And lastly, the passage ends with a cliffhanger. The clock has been ticking for so long, that Truitt fears something has gone very wrong for his mama and Wiley.

Visit Lori Roy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"What Fire Brings"

Rachel Howzell Hall is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last One; What Never Happened; We Lie Here; These Toxic Things; And Now She’s Gone; They All Fall Down; and, with James Patterson, The Good Sister, which was included in Patterson’s collection The Family Lawyer. A two-time Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist as well as an Anthony, Edgar, International Thriller Writers, and Lefty Award nominee, Hall is also the author of Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes, and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. A past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America, Hall has been a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Hall lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, What Fire Brings, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Do not leave this place. But trust your gut. But if my gut tells me to bounce, then I will bounce forthwith.

But if you leave, you can never come back. It’s over.

Which means I may never find Sam.

Which means Avery will then have to take this part on herself.

Which means that I’ll lose a chance to broaden my training in these types of undercover investigations.

Which means that I may not pass the licensing test.

Maybe I’m not ready to be a private investigator, not if I’m already thinking about leaving.

Murder. Manson . . .

And brushfires. It is California, and like drought, the Santa Ana winds, and earthquake swarms, fire is one of our seasons.
…..
I must find Santa Ynez Falls before someone looks too long at the dry hillsides and the world goes up in flames.

This page truly captures the story driving What Fire Brings.

On page 69, our heroine, Bailey Meadows, is at the “debate” part of her journey – trying to figure out if she’ll stay at the writing retreat in Topanga Canyon to continue her search for Sam, her missing friend. If she leaves, then Sam may never be found, which may ultimately mean, she may not receive the hours she needs to become a fully-licensed private investigator. But in addition to worrying about the people who may have harmed Sam, Bailey is also worried about her environment. Though it’s not fire season yet in the canyon, she senses… something. Wariness, yes, but something deeper than that.

Bailey is trying to balance duty against her need to survive, knowing that she needs to face danger for her career of choice and that California weather can often be more dangerous and unpredictable than the people she’ll be investigating.

All she knows is this: she needs to find Sam before the world around her catches fire.

Visit Rachel Howzell Hall's website.

The Page 69 Test: They All Fall Down.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Shadowheart"

Meg Gardiner is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over sixteen novels. Her thrillers have won the Edgar Award and been summer reading picks by The Today Show and O, the Oprah magazine. Called “Hitchcockian” (USA Today) and “nailbiting and moving” (Guardian), her books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Gardiner applied the Page 69 Test to the new novel in her UNSUB series, Shadowheart, and reported the following:

FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix hunts serial predators. She ventures into twilight lands and drags UNSUBs—unknown subjects—into the daylight. In Shadowheart, she carries an extra-heavy load. Convicted killer Efrem Judah Goode confesses to a dozen new murders—and draws eerie portraits of his unidentified victims. Then another layer begins emulating Goode’s murders. Caitlin must track this new murderer: a copycat, a psychopath… a competitor.

The families of missing women desperately hope that Caitlin can tell them whether their loved ones are Goode’s victims. On page 69, eighteen-year-old Finch Winter dis for evidence that her birth mother is among the dead. Finch’s adoptive family was her away from the case.

So she snoops. She and her high school boyfriend find a lockbox hidden among her adoptive mom’s belongings.

She hesitated. Zack reached for it.

“No.” She pushed his hand away. He was too eager. This wasn’t some Disney adventure film. “Let me.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor and lifted the lockbox from the cabinet. Set it on her lap, wiped the sweat from her palms, and pressed the latch.

“Oh.”

The box contained a faded snapshot of three young women leaning against a wall outside a diner. Finch picked it up. Her hand trembled.

She didn’t know any of the people in the photo. Why would her mom keep an old photo that didn’t even include herself?

But that wasn’t the thing [MC1] that made Finch’s stomach knot.

One of the young women resembled Goode’s Brooklyn Jane Doe drawing. The resemblance wasn’t just clear—it was uncanny.

Zack’s Scooby-Doo enthusiasm collapsed. His voice turned deadly serious.

“Call the FBI agent,” he said.

Finch shook her head.

“This is what she wants. This is it. Proof. The first evidence you’ve found. This is no coincidence, Finch.”

Finch stared hard at the photo. The streets in the background looked like New York. The three women in the photo were young, leaning together, not that much older than Finch was now. Eyes vivid, full of snark and something dark, despite their smiles. The one in the middle had blond hair, crooked teeth, something eager and hungry in her look.

Zack squeezed her shoulder. “She wanted evidence. What else could this be?”

Well. If it isn’t an actual clue.

Shadowheart is a thriller. It has action, chase scenes, a gunfight, and—I hope—enough suspense and tension that readers will hold their breath and bite their fingernails as they flip the pages. It also has a twisting mystery. Finch Winter and the scene on page 69 are at the heart of that.

Not bad!

Visit Meg Gardiner's website and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

The Page 69 Test: The Dirty Secrets Club.

The Page 69 Test: The Memory Collector.

My Book, The Movie: Meg Gardiner's Evan Delaney series.

The Page 69 Test: The Liar's Lullaby.

My Book, The Movie: Meg Gardiner's Jo Beckett series.

The Page 69 Test: The Nightmare Thief.

The Page 69 Test: Ransom River.

The Page 69 Test: The Shadow Tracer.

The Page 69 Test: Phantom Instinct.

The Page 69 Test: UNSUB.

The Page 69 Test: Into the Black Nowhere.

The Page 69 Test: The Dark Corners of the Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Last Note of Warning"

Katharine Schellman is a former actor and one-time political consultant. When not writing about mystery, history, and other improbable things, she can be found in her garden or finding new ways to skip steps while baking. She currently lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia in the company of her family and the many houseplants she keeps accidentally murdering. Her books include Last Call at the Nightingale and The Last Drop of Hemlock.

Schellman applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Last Note of Warning, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Bea’s hands tightened around the slim cover of the book. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

“Yeah,” Vivian said, staring down at her lap. “It ain’t good.” Taking a deep breath, not meeting Bea’s eyes, she told her what had happened at the Buchanan mansion. Her words stumbled over each other more than once, as she hurried past what she had found in Buchanan’s study and tried to explain what the police had said and thought. She kept her voice quiet, not wanting to risk the neighbors overhearing. But she still felt exposed, as though at any moment someone would swoop in and haul her away.

When she got to the commissioner’s surprise visit, Bea sucked in a sharp breath. “God almighty,” she breathed. “Girl, you are in so much trouble.”

I can’t quite decide whether the Page 99 Test does or doesn’t work for The Last Note of Warning!

On the one hand, the setting is more generic here than it is in most of the book. It's set in New York City during the Jazz Age and centers around a speakeasy known as the Nightingale, which is critical to both the plot and the feel of the book. Most of the characters are working class, and the Nightingale provides them a glamorous escape and a place where they can be themselves in a demanding and unequal world. But it also brings danger into their lives, given the criminal underworld in which it exists thanks to Prohibition.

On the other hand, Vivian and Bea are two central characters, and their friendship and support of each other is a key part of both this book and the series as a whole. It also gives readers a hint of what the main character, Vivian, is up against. There’s a murder charge and a ticking clock, and she’s going to need her friends’ help if she wants to beat it.

So, while a scene in the Nightingale would probably give readers a stronger sense of the book as a whole, I think this one isn’t too bad! Hopefully, it would persuade a reader or two to pick up the book and see what else is going to happen.

Visit Katharine Schellman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Assassins Anonymous"

Rob Hart is the author of The Paradox Hotel, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award that was named one of the best books of 2022 by Kirkus and NPR.

He also wrote The Warehouse, which sold in more than 20 languages around the world.

He is also the author of the Ash McKenna crime series, the short story collection Take-Out, the novella Scott Free with James Patterson, and the comic book Blood Oath with Alex Segura.

Hart applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Assassins Anonymous, and reported the following:

From page 69:

It may not be the field of war, but the man on the balcony, the other men in the room, they were Triad. They were in the game. The potential for death in this life is assumed. This man wasn't in the game, but he decided to join. The knowledge he put up for sale could shift geopolitics and end a lot of lives. Painfully.

Page 69 of Assassins Anonymous finds Mark, once the world’s deadliest assassin and now in a recovery program for killers, in the middle of killing a whole bunch of people! It’s a flashback sequence, to his first official job for the mysterious organization that employs him.

It’s brutal and bloody and I think gives a good feel for what the action in the book is like. I spent a lot of time outlining and designing this set piece. It takes place in a hotel room in Singapore, and Mark has been sent in to kill someone who’s about to do something very bad, but the intel he got was off—there are far more men in the room than he expected.

Cue the mayhem. I wanted it to be cool and slick, but also make it clear how utterly terrifying it must be, to be on the other end of this man’s wraith.

But it shows how good Mark is at his job, and hints toward the things he’ll come to struggle with. Just because it’s not a substance doesn’t mean it’s not addictive. Sometimes it just feels really good to be good at something. And Mark is very good at killing.

Visit Rob Hart's website.

My Book, The Movie: Potter's Field.

The Page 69 Test: Potter's Field.

The Page 69 Test: The Warehouse.

The Page 69 Test: The Paradox Hotel.

Q&A with Rob Hart.

--Marshal Zeringue