"Black Ship"

Carola Dunn is the author of several previous mysteries featuring Daisy Dalrymple as well as numerous historical novels.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Black Ship, the latest Daisy Dalrymple mystery, and reported the following:

...Madge laughed. "True. I'm not so choosy. I'll be there. Shall I be Lady Margaret, do you think? Are they that sort of people?"

"I don't think so," Daisy said doubtfully. "I suspect they'd be less likely to invite you. But I don't know them very well yet."

"Then Mrs Pearson it is."

"Bring Robin too, if you like. There's to be nursery tea as well."

"Heavens, darling, you are becoming positively domesticated."

"It's all right, we don't have to watch feeding time at the zoo. There will be nurses aplenty to scrub their jammy faces. But the little Jessup girl adores the twins, and Mrs Jessup—Mrs Aidan Jessup—is very motherly so I thought it would please her."

"You want to please Mrs Aidan Jessup? What are you up to, Daisy?"

"Nothing!"

"Aidan? Isn't that Irish?"

"I believe so. The elder Mrs Jessup was Moira Callaghan when she was on the stage."

"A chorus girl?" Madge sounded amused.

"Shakespearean," Daisy said severely.

"And Irish. Have you moved in next door to a nest of Republicans?"

"Not at all! Aidan is frightfully English in spite of his name. So is his father, in spite of all his travels on the Continent. It's the younger son...Irish Republican—I hadn't even considered that possibility. I think he's in America, not Ireland."

"I'll come early and you can tell me all about it."

"Right-oh. Yes, I'd better ring off now or Alec's going to be asking nasty questions about the telephone bill. Cheerio, darling."

Hanging up, Daisy went down to the kitchen to discuss the tea-party with Mrs Dobson. The cook-housekeeper was delighted at the prospect of showing off her baking skills....

Page 69 of Black Ship is a telephone conversation between my protagonist, Daisy Dalrymple, and a friend who plays very little part in the story. Nonetheless, it's remarkably revealing.

For a start the tone of the book is clearly not "noir," but a nice, cheerful little murder story. The period is pretty obviously 1920s, and the place is clearly England. Daisy belongs to a class that takes servants for granted.

The passage even contains strong hints--both clues and red herrings--about the mystery side of things. Daisy, who has a tendency to be "up to something," has recently moved to a new house and her next-door neighbours have Irish and possibly American connections. This is the era of Prohibition in America, when organised crime was becoming a large-scale operation. It's also a time when the Irish Republicans might stir up trouble. In fact, busy fighting among themselves, they had only recently stopped blowing up English policemen. At least temporarily.

What page 69 doesn't tell you is that Daisy's husband, Alec Fletcher, is a detective chief inspector at Scotland Yard. Nor does either Daisy or Madge mention the American acquaintance who recently turned up on the Fletchers' doorstep, announcing that he's now a Prohibition agent. The hapless Lambert has been sent to find out which British merchants are shipping wine and whisky to the US. And Daisy's new neighbours are an old-established firm of very high-class wine merchants.

In the circumstances, it's not altogether surprising that, early one morning, the Fletchers' dog finds a body hidden in the bushes in the garden!

Learn more about Black Ship at the St. Martin's Minotaur website.

Visit Carola Dunn's website and the the group blog of which she is part, The Lady Killers.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Queen of the Road"

Doreen Orion's new book, Queen of the Road: The True Tale of 47 States, 22,000 Miles, 200 Shoes, 2 Cats, 1 Poodle, a Husband, and a Bus with a Will of Its Own, was published in June, and has been chosen as Borders’ Featured Book Club Selection, a Celestial Seasonings Adventures at Every Turn Book Club pick, as well as a Target Breakout Book. It is already in fifth printing.

She applied the Page 69 Test to the book and reported the following:

I’m not terribly pleased with my page 69 test, as I don’t think it represents the rest of the book. In this selection, which occurs in the third chapter, I describe our bus “with a will of its own.” I suppose it does set up one of the major changes we went through during “the bus thing,” which was discovering we had spent too much energy and time supporting a lifestyle. We went a bit overboard in the design of our bus, and over the year we spent living in it, realized just how much we could do without.

In the prior two chapters, the reader gets to know the characters – me, a former Princess from the Island of Long (now reluctantly promoted to Queen of the Long Narrow Aisle), and my polar opposite husband, Tim (aka, Project Nerd: Domestic Superhero – he does more before 9 am than I’ll even think about doing the entire week. I never did understand that Army commercial: Is getting up at the crack of dawn to work your butt off really supposed to be a selling point?) Obviously, page 69 does not provide any clue as to all the adventures (and misadventures) we would have in our travels, nor the diverse people who would become a part of our lives. It also doesn’t portray what many readers have told me is the best part of the book: our relationship with each other. Tim and I are about as different as spouses can be, and during our bus trip this is underscored when we visit our respective families from New York City to small town Arkansas. As I observe, “In WASP families, if you don’t get along with someone, you have as little to do with them as possible. In Jewish families, if you don’t get along with someone, you move next door to make them as miserable as possible.” Hmm. Wish this was a page 51 test.

of our worldly possessions that we could not possibly live without for a year. Thankfully, the bus had a lot of closet and storage space in the living areas, and there was even more underneath in the bays, although two of the three were taken up with the heating/cooling systems, fresh, gray, and black water tanks, and generator.

Upon entering the bus, my buddy seat was immediately to the left, custom-made double-wide, both to accommodate the bus butt I planned on growing (I intended for my husband to learn that living one’s dream could have its nightmarish aspects) as well as one or two cats sitting up front with me. Across the aisle was Tim’s driver seat and behind that, a coat closet. Above the windshield was storage for all the stereo/TV equipment and just adjacent, folded up and hidden precariously (or so it seemed to me) in the ceiling over my seat, was our 42-inch flat-panel plasma TV. A coffee table that could extend into a dining table was behind the buddy seat, with a reclining sofa on the other side. Behind the sofa was a desk (which housed the satellite Internet system) and behind that, a breakfast bar which delineated the start of the kitchen.

For two non-cooks, that kitchen (not even counting the Blue Bahia granite) was a slight bit of overkill: side-by-side refrigerator/freezer, dishwasher drawer, combination microwave convection oven, sink, pullout pantries, pullout cutting boards, wine rack, appliance garage, and the Comb-o-matic 6200, aka Frankensudser - an unholy joining together of a washer and dryer into one space-saving unit. Further back, a stainless steel pocket door separated the kitchen from the bathroom, which included a toilet, the over-the-counter (and over-the-top) glass sink whose faucet was mounted on a stainless steel tile backsplash, and finally, a fairly large shower (to accommodate one human washing one standard poodle), also done in stainless steel tile.

Read an excerpt from Queen of the Road and learn more about the author and her work at Doreen Orion's website and blog.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Forever Changes"

Brendan Halpin is author of How Ya Like Me Now and Forever Changes, both novels for young adults; the novels Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Long Way Back and Donorboy; and the memoirs Losing My Faculties and It Takes a Worried Man.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest book, Forever Changes, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Forever Changes features an argument between Brianna, the main character, and her father. Brianna's going out to a party and her dad is annoying her by telling her to be careful.

"And don't sleep with anybody who doesn't deserve you."

"Aagh! You don't have to say that every time I go out!" Like anybody was even going to notice her, much less want to sleep with her if she was standing next to Melissa and Stephanie. They hadn't invented beer goggles powerful enough to make that happen.

"I know, I know, I just--"

"I know, you got drunk and did something dumb and you've been stuck with me ever since."

Dad's face turned red. "You know what? I tell you this stuff because I love you and I care about you. It's a really shitty thing to use that against me."

I suppose this page is pretty representative of the relationship between Brianna and her dad--they love each other a lot and occasionally drive each other nuts. Tone-wise and character-wise, it's a pretty good indication of what's in the rest of the book. What I really like about this page in relation to the novel as a whole is that it really shows the way the Brianna and her father have, despite Brianna's illness (she has cystic fibrosis), forged a loving and relatively normal relationship. Her dad doesn't tiptoe around Brianna because she's not well, and though her dad is really her anchor, Brianna doesn't hesitate to let him know when he's pissing her off.

Since the book is really concerned with how to live with the knowledge of your own mortality, I think this little fight shows that, at least in terms of this area, Brianna's already got it figured out.

Learn more about the book and author at Brendan Halpin's website and MySpace page.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Black Tower"

Louis Bayard is the author of the national bestseller The Pale Blue Eye and Mr. Timothy, a New York Times Notable book. A staff writer for Salon.com, Bayard has written articles and reviews for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Nerve.com, and Preservation, among others.

Last year, he applied the Page 69 Test to The Pale Blue Eye; now he has tried out the test on his new novel, The Black Tower, and reported the following:

This time around, page 69 turns out to be decently representative. The detective character -- Vidocq -- is not present (though he's waiting in the wings), but the narrator -- an earnest, fumbling medical student named Hector Carpentier -- is present and accounted for. We establish that he's 26 and that he's edging into dangerous territory. In only the second line, someone asks him, "Were you followed?"

The speaker, we soon find, is a baroness, elderly but once beautiful, with a dazzling smile "whetted against a million drawing rooms and antechambers." She lives in isolation, her only companion a cat. Uncharacteristically, she suggests a walk in the nearby Luxembourg Gardens, which are shrouded with fog -- always apt meteorology for a mystery. As we reach the end of the page, the baroness is about to explain her connection to a Monsieur Leblanc, a connection that goes back a quarter century and has a distinct bearing on current events.

Yes, all in all, a decent introduction to The Black Tower. I found myself actually turning the page, even though I know what happens.

Read an excerpt from The Black Tower, and learn more about the book and author at Louis Bayard's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Forger's Spell"

Edward Dolnick is the author of Down the Great Unknown, The Rescue Artist, and Madness on the Couch. A former chief science writer at the Boston Globe, he has written for the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his latest book, The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century, and reported the following:

The Forger's Spell is the true story of an astonishingly nervy forger who made tens of millions of dollars in the 1930s and '40s by peddling fake Vermeers. But there's a twist in the tale that sets this story of forgery apart from all others -- these forgeries fooled the world, but they are dreadful paintings that never should have fooled a soul. The book is about art and art history, but it's just as much about psychology and how our beliefs and expectations can lead us astray.

I wanted to give an insider's view of how forgers work and think, so I visited a modern-day forger who took me behind the scenes in his studio. John Myatt lives in a farmhouse a few hours outside London. Every surface in his house is cluttered with art. Paintings sit in a pile on a chair, they stand in stacks in a corner of the living room, they hang only a few inches apart on every wall. Mondrian, Chagall, Matisse, Renoir. While I watched, Myatt took up his pencil, sketched a bold and instantly recognizable face, and handed me a drawing. "To Ed," he wrote, "from Picasso." Then he added a date: "May, 1940."

On page 69, we're following Myatt around his studio:

The strangest feature of Myatt's career was that his successes turned out to have scarcely anything to do with his skill as a painter. Buyers want to believe they have found something extraordinary; the forger's task is to find ways to bolster that belief. Myatt did this (more accurately, his partner did this) by creating unquestionable credentials for each fake. Those perfect pedigrees imbued the paintings with virtues they did not truly possess, much as a fortune or a title can transform a troll into a heartthrob. "Some of my Giacomettis," Myatt says, "are just embarrassingly bad. You flip through a Christie's catalog or a Sotheby's catalog, and there they are, but you just cringe." Those paintings sold for prices as high as $250,000.

Early in his forging career, Myatt goes on, "I had to teach myself, and in the process of teaching myself, I did some really appallingly bad paintings, all of which we put on the market. Because I didn't know that they were appallingly bad until about two or three years later, and then I thought" -- here Myatt moans in mortification -- "'Oh no, everything about that's wrong, it's all wrong.' But you find yourself in the unbelievable situation where other people are saying, 'Oh, isn't it wonderful!' It was like being in a Monty Python film."

Read an excerpt from The Forger's Spell, and learn more about the author and his work at Edward Dolnick's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart"

M. Glenn Taylor's stories have been published in such literary journals as The Chattahoochee Review, Mid-American Review, Meridian, and Gulf Coast. He teaches English and fiction writing at Harper College in suburban Chicago.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his debut novel, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, and reported the following:

Page 69 of my book comes near the start of a chapter entitled “Folks Will Dust You Quick as Look at You,” and isn’t it the truth. I hope that you will believe me when I say that I’m not trying to dust or bamboozle you with what follows. You have my word.

As I pondered Mr. Zeringue’s welcome request, I also worried about what the Page 69 project might produce from my occasionally off-color first book. And, low and behold, when I turned to page 69, there before me was a first sentence that told me I should turn Mr. Zeringue down, that I should never, under any circumstance let this page see the light of day without the 68 pages that precede it and the 207 that follow. I reconsidered after consulting my wife, who is a strong, decent woman with a solid code of ethics.

What I’m getting at is this: the first sentence on page 69 of my book involves a particular thing that young Trenchmouth does when he finds himself in a position to engage in such activity with older women. It is a thing Jim Comstock might call “unmentionable.”

As I said, I’m not looking to con anyone, nor do I wish to be too crude, but I wonder how many of the authors solicited for the 69 can claim such 69-ish things?

Is the following ironic? I don’t know and don’t care to take much time to figure. What’s important is that a project such as this one aims to get folks reading, and there aren’t many aims that can equal such importance, in my estimation. So, I’ll only preface my one page excerpt with this: Dear reader, please realize that the teenaged boy about which you are to read was orphaned in 1903 and grew up hard in the hills of southern West Virginia. For a time, he found his way as best he knew how, and that involved a whole lot of moonshine and false religion, and when those two things get together with a few suppressed women, only naughtiness can ensue. Only trouble can come. And so it does:

Trenchmouth had even started to forge his tongue-talking while in a woman’s nether-regions. The genuine article, the God he’d found down there on Independence Day, had ceased to draw out holy babble. He’d had to fake it after the six or seventh time. All part of the act. What had been, at least that first time with Anne Sharples, an awakening, had transformed into a job. They never let him kiss their mouths or dip his wick. Some had even worried so heavily on the contagiousness of his disease that he’d procured a medical almanac to show them it wasn’t contagious. Ewart wouldn’t set foot in his hideout anymore, much less speak to him on account of his newfound tendency to avoid her, ignore her even. But, between the women and the small fee he charged J.B. Smith for his services in church every Sunday, Trenchmouth’s coin sack was getting heavy. He was saving up for something, he just didn’t know what.

On a particularly cold Sunday afternoon, Trenchmouth sat at the kitchen table in silence with Clarissa and the Widow. They hardly spoke in these days of awkward adolescence. Brother and sister went so far as to avert contact of the eye. But all hands touched when the Widow said the blessing.

“We give thanks O Lord for the food before us and the family beside us.” They all said Amen. They all ate. Wet wood cracked and hissed at them from the heating stove, alongside small chips of coal and coke stolen from slag heaps and found on railroad tracks. The sheet steel pipe hadn’t stayed air tight. The Widow coughed. The windows fogged over thick and milky.

Clarissa knew that her mother knew that Fred Dallara was after her cherry. Trenchmouth knew that his mother knew he was taking up serpents and making a fool of himself at a temple of blaspheme. But, she believed that adolescents would make their mistakes, with or without her warnings against them, so she kept quiet.

Read an excerpt from The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, and learn more about the book and author at the official website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Takeover"

Lisa Black is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and has been certified by the American Board of Criminalistics.

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

I’m happy to report that page 69 of Takeover is, in my humble opinion, fairly representative of the rest of the book. The basic plot has been presented: forensic scientist Theresa MacLean starts out investigating the early-morning murder of a man who worked at the Federal Reserve in Cleveland (one of only 12 in the country). When her homicide detective fiancé goes to the Fed to find out more about the victim, two men break in to rob the place and take her fiancé hostage along with the other employees. Theresa sticks close to her fiance’s partner when the police set up a command center in the public library across the street and is dismayed to meet the crisis negotiator, a showy and possibly self-aggrandizing Chris Cavanaugh. Her fiancé’s life is depending on a man who just might care more about his own persona than the human lives he’s trying to save.

On page 69, we have all three of the major players in this book: Theresa, Chris, and the dominant criminal, Lucas. This is the first conversation between Chris and Lucas, with Theresa sitting nearby, biting her nails.

“It’s so nice to be talking with you today, Chris. My name is Lucas. I’m going to want some things, and I’ll need a yes or no from you. Can you do that, or should I be talking to someone else? I don’t intend to repeat myself.”

“I’m not trying to argue with you here, but all the conversation is going to go through me. That’s the way we do it. How’s everybody doing in there? Anyone hurt?”

“Let me tell you how I do it, Chris.” The man’s derision came over the speaker loud and clear, but with a slight wobble. He probably wasn’t as tough as he liked to sound, but Theresa knew enough about the psychology of criminals to know that that would not be a help. Any insecurities would only make him more desperate. “I talk to the guy in charge.”

“How are the people in there? Is anyone hurt?”

“They’re going to be if I don’t talk to the guy in charge.”

Theresa let her breath release from aching lungs. Sixty seconds in, and already they could not meet a demand, couldn’t produce the person in charge, and all because Chris Cavanaugh had acted prematurely in order to keep the limelight directly on himself.

Theresa is both right and wrong, it will turn out, in her assessment of Chris Cavanaugh. He definitely likes the limelight, yes, but he is also operating according to established protocols. In any hostage negotiation, the person responsible for making the ultimate decisions about the taker’s demands will not be the guy on the phone. There are a number of reasons—because the negotiator can’t afford to be distracted long enough to debate points with the other powers that be, or because, after hours of conversation, the negotiator might become sympathetic toward the taker and give in to their demands too easily. So every hostage negotiation team has a number of people—at a minimum, the negotiator, the decision-maker, the researcher (who runs around in the background checking out details and trying to get information, the scribe (who takes notes throughout the ordeal, especially of what the taker says or does), and the assault team leader.

I hope this page would make people want to keep reading, if only to find out who comes out on top of our three way heap—Lucas, Chris, or Theresa?

Learn more about Takeover and the author at Lisa Black's website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The 19th Wife"

David Ebershoff is the author of the novels Pasadena and The Danish Girl, and a short-story collection, The Rose City.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The 19th Wife, and reported the following:

When I opened The 19^th Wife to p. 69 I honestly did not know what I would find. The novel is in some ways two novels – one about Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young’s 19^th wife. In 1875 she divorced her powerful husband, left the Mormon Church, and went on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. The second narrative is told by Jordan Scott, a present-day young man who grew up in a polygamous community in a remote part of the Utah desert and whose mother has been arrested for killing his polygamous father. On top of that, much of the book is narrated through several historical “documents” (I use quotes because I wrote them, although they are presented to the reader as archival texts). So when I turned to p.69 I didn’t know if I would find a scene from Ann Eliza’s narrative, or Jordan’s. As it turns out, it’s from Jordan’s story and it passes the test: this page represents the quest Jordan is on to find out who killed his dad. Out of curiosity, I turned to p. 99: there I found a part-title page, introducing a section from Ann Eliza’s story. And so for The 19^th Wife, when taken together pages 69 and 99 give the reader a quick glimpse into the book’s expansive story.

Read an excerpt from The 19th Wife, and learn more about the author and his work at David Ebershoff's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Volk’s Shadow"

"Brent Ghelfi writes like Dostoevsky's hooligan great-grandson on speed," said Lee Child of Ghelfi's widely-acclaimed debut, Volk's Game.

Ghelfi applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Volk’s Shadow, and reported the following:

Three themes drive the story in Volk’s Shadow. The opening scene finds tortured hero Alexei Volkovoy contemplating all of them as he helicopters into the aftermath of an apparent terrorist explosion. Defend the motherland, secure Russia’s southern flank, and protect the innocents.

The last of those themes is illustrated on page 69.

Once again enlisted in Russia’s war against Chechen terrorists, and already investigating the brutal murder of a Russian army captain, Volk is asked by his friend Masha, an aging babushka, to search for a missing 12-year-old girl. Preoccupied, lonely without his lover, Valya, Volk prefers to decline. Instead, he agrees to help.

His decision plumbs the depths of his character, and provides a sense of the entire novel.

From Page 69:

“Things like this usually end badly. If Semerko took her a week ago, it’s probably over.”

I didn’t mean to sound so harsh. But I don’t have time for fairy tales, and I can already envision the sad scene when I tell the girl’s family a whitewashed version of the truth and watch their hopes shatter.

Masha’s blue eyes are moist. “You think I don’t know that she’s probably already dead?”

I feel small enough to crawl under the door. I start to say something, but Masha hunches over her knitting again, and I close my mouth. Thinking back, I realize that when Valya left I disengaged in a way that I never had before. Even in Chechnya I distinguished predator from prey, and acted accordingly, and my willingness to help those who were worthy was one of the things that brought Valya and me together in the first place.

I look up to see Masha watching the emotions at work on my face. She points a needle at the shelves behind me. “I have pictures that might help you make up your mind.”

Two unframed photos are laying flat on the shelf. I reach back and take them down. The top one shows an old woman hunched in a rocker, wrapped in so many blankets it is impossible to judge her size or shape. The skin of her face sags, and her white hair is so wispy that her freckled brown skull shows clearly beneath it. Behind and above her is a shrine on a makeshift shelf made from a board painted white. Thin church candles stand at each end of the board, stuck in a base of their own melted wax. Between them, plastic flowers frame a picture that I think is the same one as the second in my hand—a pretty girl in an over-the-shoulder pose that makes her appear very young.

Galina has laughing hazel eyes, curly brown hair, and skinny, little-girl legs poking from her flared polka-dot skirt. She looks nothing like Valya, either now or as I imagine Valya would have looked at the same age. Galina is soft-brown innocence compared to Valya’s smoky-white brilliance. And yet the association is impossible to resist.

I shut my eyes against the memories of the stories Valya has told me of her childhood. Stories I can’t bear to recall, stories that make me feel helpless, powerless to prevent the spreading stain of evil. When I open my eyes again, Masha’s gaze meets mine.

“Do whatever you have to do, Alexei. Please. Just find her.”

Read "Volk's Dossier," and learn more about Volk's Shadow at the publisher's website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Good People"

Marcus Sakey is the author of The Blade Itself and At the City's Edge.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Good People, and reported the following:

This is my third time running this test with Marshal, and the only conclusion I can draw is this: either the Page 69 test is flawed, or my books are. Probably the latter.

Or rather, maybe it's all in how you look at it. If the question is whether Page 69 is representative of the book as a whole, the answer is not particularly. It does feature major characters, and some emotional connections that are important, but I wouldn't say that the extreme closeup gives a good view of the larger piece.

But if the question is whether it would intrigue a reader and make them want to read on, I hope so. Because Page 69 of my new book, Good People, is the beginning of a sex scene:

He floated on the edge of dream, the world blurry, as something rubbed against him. Drifting, body here, consciousness there, sensations rolling through him. Skin against his own in a slow wriggle, neck to ankles. He could smell Anna, the faint homey hint of musk. The night air was pleasant, and he'd kicked the blanket off hours before. The sheet was soft as bathwater.

Tom mumbled sleep moans, thought about opening his eyes, didn't. He felt her back against his chest, a gentle dancing touch, warm and complete where she moved, cool and wanting where she pulled away. The press and arc of her bottom. A heat growing inside him, familiar and forgotten. He didn't know what time it was, hadn't opened his eyes to check, but it seemed late, somewhere in the lonely hours of the night when the world disappeared. She moved again, arched against him, and this time his moan wasn't from sleep. He felt himself taut in his briefs, rigid against the curve of her. Tom opened his eyes.

Anna's head was turned to the ceiling, her features faint against the dark, eyes just a glimmer of reflected light. He saw her smile; then she pressed backward again, the cleft of her ass grinding against him.

Hopefully, yeah, a reader would turn a page. After all, the good stuff happens on Page 70. And Page 71.

Sorry about that.

Read an excerpt from Good People, and learn more about the author and his work at Marcus Sakey's website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Undertow"

Sydney Bauer is the author of a series of novels featuring Boston based criminal attorney, David Cavanaugh. The first in the series, Undertow, is out now in the U.S. Gospel, the second title in the series, is already available in Australia.

The author applied the Page 69 Test to Undertow and reported the following:

A long time ago, when I was an enthusiastic English student in high school, my much respected English teacher told me that painting the character of the villain in your writing was key to a piece’s success.

She also taught me the importance of ‘showing’ not ‘telling’ and the beauty of what a ‘back story’ could do for you, in developing your story’s plot.

Well, in a nutshell I guess that is what page 69 does for my novel Undertow.

Undertow features the adventures of my recurring protagonist, Boston criminal defense attorney David Cavanaugh, and his main nemesis, in this, my first novel, is a powerful US Senator by the name of Rudolph Haynes.

On page 69 we take a journey back to the day Haynes meets his prodigy – a Secret Service Agent named Vince Verne who is actually key to driving the book’s show stopping courtroom finale.

Their first meeting shapes the future of their relationship and lays the foundations of Verne’s loyalty to the senator. It gives the reader a sense of what David might be ‘up against’ as he tries to free his client – an African American woman accused of murdering the senator’s seventeen-year-old daughter.

As the book eventually shows, blind loyalty can be a dangerous thing – especially when an instruction is misinterpreted, and page 69 introduces this issue which drives both the tragedy and the triumph in the book.

What a great test!!!

Oh – and as far as I am concerned…it works!

Listen to an excerpt from Undertow, and learn more about the author and her work at Sydney Bauer's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Schooled"

Until 2006, Anisha Lakhani taught English at the Dalton School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Soon after she started teaching, she was named chair of the Middle School English Department. Lakhani received both her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Columbia University.

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

Excerpt from page 69:

"Ms. Taggert. That was me. I was a teacher at Langdon Hall. This was my dream job and I was not going to suck."

I am providing the last line on page 69 as it concludes chapter 7 of Schooled. In many ways this line is indicative of several plot points / themes in my book. The need for my character to constantly re-affirm her role and position as a teacher conveys an insecurity she feels for much of the novel -- does she fit in? Do the students like her? Is she a capable teacher? A student has just told her that while her class did "suck," the Frost poem that was read did not. Anna's usage of the word "suck" hints at the future mistakes she will make in the novel, especially when trying too hard to fit in with her students -- dressing like them, using their "lingo" and trying to please their every whim. It's one line, the last one on page 69, but an interesting experiment indeed because yes, the line on many levels does capture the heart of Schooled. But you'd only know that if you wrote the book, or kept reading...

Learn more about Schooled and its author at Anisha Lakhani's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue