"American Leviathan"

Patrick Griffin, Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia, is the author of American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his book and reported the following:

The answer, of course, is that p. 69 does and does not get to the heart of what this book is about. But that makes the whole experiment interesting. Here's a sample of what I say on p. 69:

"As they transgressed the Line, therefore, settlers also contested the assumptions upon which the Line was drawn. Yet even as they used arguments that betokened stadial assumptions, they were articulating something more troubling. They saw themselves as “white,” after all. And they refused to believe that Indians in the West differed from Indians in the East. They both were uncivilized. The question is were they civilize-able? Unwilling to wait for civility to take hold, settlers refused even to entertain such questions. What had emerged on the frontier was a frightening spectrum of opinion ranging from the genocidal impulses of the few to the darker interpretation of the stadial vision of the many, the merger of the pre-modern and the modern. Frontier settlers did not challenge the bases of British notions of civility — they agreed with them — but in the midst of violence, they contested the implications of the civilizing scheme."

So we get a glimpse of some of the ideas that make the book tick. The book explores the meaning of the American Revolution by looking at its edges, and what this revolution has to do with American character. As such, it charts the ways in which British ideas of empire did not, nor could not, work in America. On p. 69, we join the action in mid-stream, as settlers are refusing to obey British officials who argue that Indians should be protected and their lands inviolate. They have also kinds of sophisticated arguments for making such claims, and settlers -- believe it or not -- operate within the same ideological universe. But they can't right now. What follows, then, is this: all hell breaks loose, and all sorts of Americans and Britons are caught up in an elemental struggle -- of which race, class, and land are elements -- about sovereignty as society collapses in on itself that only the state can rectify. Hence the title, American Leviathan. With the state's involvement, American empire was the ransom paid for American nationhood. The nature of the revolution on the frontier also reveals another important aspect of the book: common people, for better and for worse, stood at the center of these dynamics. On the one hand, as per the cult of the founding father, we should ignore them. On the other hand, we should not romanticize them. I do neither. These dynamics -- encompassing the faceless people who were at the center of things, and the janus-faced nature of the outcomes of revolution -- made America American.

In many ways, the exercise itself reflects the way I hope that readers will engage the book. It can be read as a narrative of revolution, a story of the American Revolution, a tale of Indian/white relations, and a broader narrative about the meaning of sovereignty, empire, and nation. Is this all confusing? Do you want to know more? All to the good. Then read on ....

Visit the publisher's webpage for American Leviathan.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Acceptance"

Susan Coll is the author of Rockville Pike, karlmarx.com, and the new novel Acceptance, to which she applied the "page 69 test" and then reported the following:

Page 69 falls at the end of a chapter, and picks up a scene mid-dialogue. It’s not the ideal stand-alone page, but it does its bit to represent thematically. Acceptance is a social comedy about the college admissions process and this page involves an ugly conversation between two mothers. Nina makes a blatantly racist comment about Maya, one of the teenaged protagonists who is a sweet kid, a stand-out swimmer but an average student -- an anomaly in her over-achieving family. Nina suggests that Maya will get into any school to which she applies simply because of her ethnicity. Grace, who is meant to be the voice of reason in the novel, struggles to come up with an appropriate response. She’s outraged, but isn’t sure what good it will do to start a fight with her neighbor, particularly since their relations are already strained. I actually wrestled a bit with this very page -- originally Grace just sucked it up and decided not to respond, but my editor suggested she ought to have a bit more spine.

“I believe the Kaluantharanas are Hindu, actually, Grace replied, a much sharper response poised on the tip of her tongue. She was not a confrontational person, and her first instinct was to always keep the peace. Starting a fight with Nina would do little to change the world and would only make their interactions even more unpleasant. She wondered how she could have spent so many years with Nina without recognizing all this venom just beneath the surface. Or was it possible that Nina had not always been this way, and that like Lou, something inside was turning toxic as she headed into middle age.

“Oh, whatever,” said Nina. “I guess I have to confess that I don’t really know the difference. There’s just so many foreigners in this neighborhood. Like that guy who just moved in up the street, the one with the thing on his head.

“He’s a Sikh, Nina,” she replied. “He works for the IMF. Now she felt herself about to explode. “You really ought to listen to yourself -- you sound like a racist!”

She couldn’t believe she’d just said this. The remark felt uncharacteristically bold as well as incredibly stupid. Nina was a racist! She waited for Nina’s angry reply, but none was forthcoming. She’d forgotten Nina was a master of denial…

Visit Coll's website and her blog, and read an excerpt from Acceptance.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Shooting Gallery"

Hailey Lind is the author of Feint of Art, Shooting Gallery, and the forthcoming Brush with Death.

She applied the "page 69 test" to Shooting Gallery and reported the following:

When I turned to page 69 of Shooting Gallery, the second book in the Art Lover’s Mystery Series, it surprised me to see that I dropped the “F” bomb about halfway through the page. Not that I haven’t been known to drop said bomb myself from time to time – especially when dealing with the legendary San Francisco Bay Area traffic — but I rarely use such language otherwise, and certainly not gratuitously.

However, the scene explains the language: after a rather raucous scene the series protagonist, Annie Kincaid, has finally gained access to the studio of reclusive sculptor, Robert Pascal. Pascal brought a marble sculpture to his studio in order to do some repair work, but ever since has refused to give the sculpture back to its rightful owners. Pascal’s character becomes clear to the reader in the following scene from page 69:

“No. They can’t have it back,” he said dispassionately. “Not now.”

“Not now?” I echoed. “Does that mean you’ll give it back later?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Not at the moment, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t fucking want to.”

“But you must know it’s driving the Hewetts crazy.”

“I don’t care. It’s my goddamned sculpture.”

“Mr. Pascal, don’t get me wrong — I’m a strong supporter of the integrity of an artist’s vision. But Head and Torso belongs to the Hewetts. You sold it to them in 1968, and surely the check’s cleared by now—“

“They’re morons. They don’t appreciate it.”

My brief interaction with Janice Hewett inclined me to share Pascal’s assessment, but that was not the point. If intelligence were a prerequisite for owning art, most of the world’s finest palaces would have nothing on their walls except spiderwebs.

“They paid only twenty-five hundred dollars for it,” Pascal continued. “It’s worth nearly half a million now.”

“I think I understand,” I replied, choosing my words with care. “I know how hard it is to part with something that comes straight from your soul. But in the society we live in …well, the people who buy the stuff get to keep the stuff. Are you aware that the Hewetts are threatening a lawsuit if you don’t return the sculpture?”

There was a scuffling sound high overhead, followed by a muted pounding…

This excerpt is representative of the book in the aside about art hanging in palaces, and in Annie’s acknowledgement of the difficulty in the artist giving up his work – especially to someone he thinks is undeserving. Though the books are humorous, character-driven mysteries for non-art lovers as well as art fans, I myself am an artist and enjoy including personal asides from an artistic perspective.

On the other hand, page 69 is not typical of Shooting Gallery in that it is not particularly funny. The “scuffling sound” overhead is precursor to a comical stunt by some of Annie’s friends; and this discussion with Pascal occurs right after a riotous party in the hallway. As such, it is something of a breathing space in the story, a character set-up that will lead to much more throughout the book.

Visit Hailey Lind's website and blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"American Purgatorio"

John Haskell is the author of the story collection, I Am Not Jackson Pollock, and the novel, American Purgatorio, to which he applied the "page 69 test" and reported the following:

I don't have the book in front of me, but I'll guess page 69 comes during a section called Luxuria, which means lust. At that point a man, travelling in a car, is about half way across the country, and it's similar to the rest of the book in that he's looking for his wife, trying to avoid the fact that she may be dead and that he may be dead. Because this particular part of the book is about sexual desire, it's different than the rest of the book, but because the entire book is about desire, it's not that different.

Read an excerpt from American Purgatorio and visit John Haskell's website.

Haskell's work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, Conjunctions, and Ploughshares; he is a contributor to the NPR radio program The Next Big Thing.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Jesus Machine"

Dan Gilgoff is a Senior Editor at U.S. News & World Report, where he covers national politics and the intersection of politics and religion. After the 2004 election, he wrote the first in-depth profile of James Dobson and Focus on the Family, which evolved into his new book, The Jesus Machine.

He applied the "page 69 test" to The Jesus Machine and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Jesus Machine explains how Focus on the Family, the most powerful organization in Christian Right history, is desperately trying to attract new and younger followers by launching some highly interactive web sites. Though Focus maintains a mailing list of nearly six million names and addresses, the average age of those on the list is 52. Because Focus on the Family’s primary mission is helping parents raise their children, that statistic is unsettling.

So Focus is launching web sites like focusonyourchild.org:

“… the site asks parents to sign up for a free membership, which includes eight newsletters and four CD journals annually, plus access to premium web content…. There are separate newsletters and CD journals for four different age levels, and subscriptions change automatically as the child ages. As of early 2006, a quarter million users had signed up.”

The early part of my book explains how Focus on the Family founder James Dobson has gotten more politically powerful than Christian Right leaders Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson ever were precisely because he is not seen as a political activist, but as a trusted family advisor. Dobson built his massive following by dispensing advice on child rearing and marriage on his daily radio show. The focusonyourchild.org site is a prime example of how Dobson and Focus have always developed close personal relationships with their followers around family issues before enlisting them in any political crusades. But, as Page 69 goes onto say:

“Of course, Focus also believes that the more people it can help and form intimate, lasting relationships with, the more soldiers it can enlist in the culture war. “Eventually, we can get them to mobilize on our behalf,” said [Steve] Maegdlin, the director of constituent acquisitions. “They essentially become an extension of who we are.”

The page concludes by saying that Focus is walking a tightrope in attempting to gain new “constituents.” That’s because it’s difficult to gain new followers by “nurturing” young families while simultaneously becoming much more vocal in the divisive culture war though Focus’s new sister group, Focus on the Family Action:

“…as James Dobson becomes ever more public about his political activism under the auspices of Focus on the Family Action, branding Focus as a political organization in the public eye, he complicates the strategy of reaching new constituents through spotlighting the organization’s “nurturing” side.”

For a reader cracking the book open for the first time and landing on page 69, it would no doubt be difficult to contextualize. But in detailing how Focus on the Family is struggling to become both more family-oriented and more political, it actually touches on the book’s central paradox, that Dobson’s is an unrivaled political power because he’s seen to be above the partisan political fray.

Visit The Jesus Machine website and read excerpts from the book.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Our Undemocratic Constitution"

Sanford Levinson holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his most recent book, Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It), and reported the following:

Page 69 of Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It) includes the beginning of a new section, "The Constitution as Inadvertent Promoter of Discontinuity in Government (and Presidential Dictatorship)." The general thesis of the book is that the U.S. Constitution is so far from perfect as to contain a number of "clear and present dangers" in what I call its "hard-wired" features, i.e., the rigid structural features of the Constitution that are not subject to litigation or imaginative (re)interpretation. This particular section discusses the fact that a catastrophic attack on the U.S. that disabled (but did not kill) most senators and either killed or disabled most members of the House of Representatives would leave us vulnerable to the following situation: Because the Constitution requires a majority of its members to constitute a quorum, if a majority of each House was disabled, then, technically speaking, neither House could meet. (Dead senators, incidentally, don't present the same kind of problem, as the 17th Amendment allows governors immediately to name their successors. The Constitution, however, requires that all members of the House be elected. Dead representatives "solve" the quorum problem, but generate a perhaps more serious legitimacy problem if, for example, there were only relatively few representatives alive to constitute the quorum.) Since it would be essential that government act in the immediate aftermath of such an attack, the Constitution itself, because of the way that it can effectively eliminate Congress as an effective/legitimate actor, encourages a presidential dictatorship. As it happens, the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute have jointly suggested a corrective amendment, but it has gone nowhere because of the adamant opposition of former Chair of the House Judiciary Committee James Sensenbrenner, a conservative Republican but radical democrat who hates the idea that governors might be able to appoint any members of the House, even in the circumstances of a catastrophic attack. It will be interested to see if it makes a difference that John Conyers is now chair of the Committee.

Although this is scarcely the most serious defect in our Constitution, p. 69 does illustrate the major theme of the book quite well, save, perhaps, for the relative ease with which this particular defect could be cured. We mistakenly view the Constitution primarily as a charter of rights and tend to ignore its much more important function as providing, for good and definitely for ill, the basic structures of governance.

Read a brief description of Our Undemocratic Constitution.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Final Sins"

Final Sins is the third and probably last installment in Michael Prescott's series of books featuring Abby Sinclair and Tess McCallum.

The author applied the "page 69 test" to Final Sins and reported the following:

I admit I was skeptical about the value of the page 69 test, but in fact this particular page of my newest novel, Final Sins, does seem pretty representative of the main characters and themes of the book.

On page 69, my heroine, Abby Sinclair, is talking on the phone with her latest client, Peter Faust. Abby is a freelance security operative who specializes in neutralizing stalkers. Faust is a German expatriate who served a few years in a mental hospital after committing a gruesome murder. He has since become a fringe celebrity, writing a bestselling memoir about his crime. Plagued by a stalker, he has hired Abby, who took him on with extreme reluctance because of his ugly past.

The relationship between the two is central to the story, and to the conversation on page 69. Abby is repelled by Faust, yet irresistibly curious about the workings of his mind. The first paragraph captures this motif:

Abby hesitated. "Where'd you get the branding iron?"

The branding iron was used in the commission of his homicide. Faust burned a runic symbol, the wolfsangel, into his victim's hand. The wolfsangel was worn by SS officers in Nazi Germany. "It has been prohibited in Germany, you know," Faust tells her, "along with the swastika and other insignias of the National Socialists." Faust's connection to Hitler and to Nazi occultism is another theme of the book, which plays out at the climax when he is tracked to a forested area in Germany where Himmler's SS officers used to gather for mystic rituals.

Faust asks:

"Are there any further questions?"

"Did you brand her before or after she was dead?"

"Before. It was the penultimate act. I seared my totem onto the back of her hand, and then I brought out the strap and with it I encircled her slender neck. Your neck, also, is most slender and well-shaped."

"That's not what I'd call a compliment. More like grounds for a restraining order."

"You, of all people, must know how useless a restraining order can be."

This exchange establishes the other element of the Abby-Faust dynamic - an undercurrent of menace, which will become more explicit as the story develops.

The bottom line is that page 69 offers a good preview of the overall story. I glanced at a few other pages at random, just to see how easy it was to find a representative page. None of the others seemed nearly as relevant as page 69. This includes page 99, which can be the subject of its own test. My page 99 is only a half page, and contains nothing special.

One more thing. In recounting how he found the branding iron in an antique store, Faust (still on page 69) says:

"It was most - what is the term? - serendipitous."

Page 69 turned out to be most serendipitous, too!

Visit Michael Prescott's website and his blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Virgin"

Hanne Blank's work has appeared to great acclaim in many print and online publications, anthologies and collections, as well as in book form.

Her new book is Virgin: The Untouched History, to which she applied the "page 69 test" and reported the following:

Page 69 of Virgin: The Untouched History is, I think, pretty indicative of what the book is like. It combines analysis, scholarly discussion, and juicy bits of the kind of historical stuff you just don't see in many histories, all in the same discussion.

This page brings us in at the tail end of a discussion of one of medical history's fascinating unsolved mysteries, a syndrome known for five hundred years as "the disease of virgins." This disease had a number of other names, including "greensickness" and "chlorosis," but the most important things to know about it in order to understand what is on page 69 are that it
1) was considered a serious, possibly life-threatening illness;
2) affected only virgin women, and thus usually young ones;
3) was quite common and well-known as an illness from the 16th century to the early 20th, in the same sort of way that depression or eating disorders are today; and
4) literally vanished from the medical landscape in the early 20th century, to the point that few doctors nowadays would know what you were talking about if you mentioned it.

Page 69 deals specifically with what cures were considered good for the disease of virgins: improving diet (especially with red meat, wine, and later, mineral supplements), and, as referenced in this tidbit of Elizabethan doggerel, which I quote in the book, sexual intercourse:

"A mayden, faire of ye greene sicknesse late
Pity to see, perplexed was full sore
resolvinge how t'amend her bad estate,
In this distresse Apollo doth implore
Cure for her ill; ye oracle assignes,
Keep ye the first letter of these severall lines."

(Read the first letter of every line if you want the "best cure" punchline without having to make your way through the antiquated English.)

As for what you can expect from the rest of the book? Everything from virginity tests to the Church Fathers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Spanish gypsy deflowering rituals ... and well beyond. But I think page 69, its historical long view studded with very specific (and sometimes pretty risque) examples and a sense of humor, is very much what I tried to bring to every other page as well.

Visit Hanne Blank's website and her blog, and read an excerpt from Virgin.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Madonna Magdalene"

Kim Garcia's work has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Rosebud, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Mississippi Review, Brightleaf, Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops, Negative Capability and Lullwater Review, among others. She is the recipient of the 2004 Ursala LeGuin Prize, the 2002 Willard R. Espy Award, an AWP Intro Writing Award, a Hambridge Fellowsip and an Oregon Individual Artist Grant.

She applied the "page 69 test" to her poetry collection Madonna Magdalene and reported the following:

Page 69 of Madonna Magdalene is a poem called “Cain,” the third and final part of a passionate conversation I imagined out of the Genesis stories. In his own dramatic monologue Adam has mourned the loss of Paradise in his lover, Before you I slept and I have not forgotten your perfection. But in “Eve’s Answer,” Eve argues that in Paradise they were like stones falling, too stupid/ with obedience to grieve and welcomes their newly fallen state:

Only God’s fingers, that joyful grasping inside me,

could have seized such sight.

Only God within you

could have been tempted by it.

What evil can come

of such a joyful beginning?

“Cain” answers that question, reminding us that even a murderer was once a beautiful baby, as perfect as any Christ child. Giving voice to the tender complexities between mother and child, between lovers, and lovers of God, is what I hoped to do in Madonna Magdalene, and I’m grateful to "Page 69" for giving me a chance to think about them again here. For me beauty and suffering and joy can bloom together in a single moment of incarnation, as they do here in the world’s first child.

Genesis Suite: Cain

It is a fresh-fallen world,
and Cain is master of it.
First tooth, first step, first word.
He will be second in nothing.

The raw yoke of the sun
runs warm light over his downy back.
The stone floor is furred with gold.
Cain’s day is fat and vigorous;
and what he sees, he possesses whole.

In the night his cradle rocks
under the open window
as he moves his heavy head,
round and white as the moon,
from side to side.

He dreams what all children will dream:
endless, indivisible dominion.
His small hands grip hard
against the rough cotton under his body.
Soft nails scratch quietly as they move.

The moonlight slides over his body
making the new down on his head
cold, bright silver
and all his body white with light.

Visit Kim Garcia's website and check out her poetry available online.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Tales from the Town of Widows"

James Cañón's English short fiction has been anthologized in Bésame Mucho, (Painted Leaf Press), and Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas, (Cleis Press).

His debut novel is Tales from the Town of Widows, to which he applied the "page 69 test" and reported the following:

What would happen if all the men of an isolated village were swept off in a war and the women were left alone?

My first novel, Tales from the Town of Widows, tells the story of Mariquita, a mountain village in Colombia, where all the men have been forcibly recruited by communist guerrillas to fight for their cause. In a single tragic event, the women and children of the village are left alone to deal with both nature's powerful elements and the absence of the men who had ruled their lives. Now virtual widows, the women must fend for themselves, must get beyond their grief and pull together to survive. In the process of rebuilding their lives, they challenge the strong male orientation of the world and discover their own strength, self-sufficiency and power. Ultimately, they create a social order based on female values: harmony, cooperation and respect for every individual. This all-female utopia is put to the test when, after sixteen years, four men return to the village…

Page 69 of Tales from the Town of Widows is the third page of the chapter called “The Teacher Who Refused to Teach History.” In this chapter, Cleotilde, a mysterious old woman displaced by the war, stops in Mariquita on her way to the south. She is welcomed in the poor home of fourteen-year-old Virgelina Saavedra and her sulky grandmother Lucrecia.

Cleotilde felt as though Lucrecia were scrutinizing her face and body for some sign of wealth. She truly hoped Lucrecia wasn’t expecting her to pay for putting her up for a night. Cleotilde had barely enough cash in her purse to pay for the bus ticket that would take her far away from this decayed village.

Page 69 illustrates some of the physical and emotional consequences of the Colombian forty-year-old conflict, as well as the sentiments of Colombians toward the war.

“As you can see, we’re very poor,” Lucrecia said.

“Oh, aren’t we all?” Cleotilde interposed. “This war has left us all in financial straits.” She wondered if Lucrecia knew the word straits. You can’t even tell who’s worst, the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, or the government… With the situation the way it is, tell me, who’s going to employ an old woman like myself?”

“Nobody,” Lucrecia replied, looking a little frustrated that Cleotilde’s speech had ruled out any possibility of her making a few pesos that night. “We have nothing to offer you but coffee. You want a cup of coffee?” she said.

Cleotilde thanked her, saying that it was too late for coffee, that she asked for nothing but a place to sleep and a candle. “I like to read before going to sleep, don’t you?”

“I don’t read or write,” the woman stated resolutely, as though she were proud of it.

“Sweet Lord! I can’t imagine not being able to read.” Then, addressing Virgelina, who was trimming the wick of a fresh candle with her teeth, she asked, “Do you read?”

The girl shook her head.

“Little girl,” Cleotilde said, raising her index finger in the air. “You ought to know that education is a tool for success.”

“Women around here don’t need no education,” Lucrecia said bitterly. “Besides, the school’s been closed for over two years.”

“Two years? How dreadful!”

Virgelina handed Cleotilde the candle and an empty Coca-Cola bottle to serve as a holder. “The magistrate promised us the school will reopen soon,” the girl said softly. “As soon as a teacher gets hired.”

“A teacher?” Cleotilde said, getting up from her seat. “Isn’t that a coincidence? I’m a licensed teacher.”

After hearing about the job opportunity, Cleotilde decides to apply for the job. But there’s a problem: she refuses to teach history. Having witnessed in her youth the horrors of a civil war, she opted for disregarding the past, and thus she stopped teaching the country’s appalling history that has made a victim of her.

Visit James Cañón's website and read an excerpt from Tales from the Town of Widows.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Thousand Suns"

Alex Scarrow's A Thousand Suns is a nominee for a Best First Novel Thriller Award.

He applied the "page 69 test" to the novel and reported the following:

Page 69 is a very handy page to read ... our protagonist is about to make a discovery aboard the wreck of a B-17 bomber, submerged off the coast of New England since the last week of the second World War. And with this discovery laid out before the reader, the book is ready to segue back into the past - the dying days of the war, to witness the Germans putting in place the final components of audacious plan ... an attempt to swing the war around by dropping the world's very first atom bomb on New York. This is a really good page on which to stumble into the story, you're just about to hit that revelatory stage of the book.

Visit the Scarrow Brothers' website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Big Numbers"

A former reporter for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and the Los Angeles Times, Jack Getze covered financial and economic issues for more than 15 years. Switching professions, Getze later sold stocks and bonds for a regional securities firm on the New Jersey Shore.

Big Numbers, his first published novel, is based on his experiences as a retail broker, sales manager, and financial executive. He applied the "page 69 test" to the novel and reported the following:

I'm disappointed my page 69 didn't have more humor on it, as I think Big Numbers makes most readers laugh a lot. But I have to admit the passage is representative of the suspense novel, even containing reference to my protagonist's symbol of desperation, the pick-up mounted camper he lives in. And this page clearly shows my sparse writing style. Page 69 begins with a one-liner that doesn't need a set-up, and I carried the scene a few graphs into page 70 because this is the end of Chapter Twenty.

I mean how can a guy compete with something that’s fourteen inches long and hums?

I open my eyes. The hospital room is filled with gray morning light.

A dark human shape comes into focus at the foot of the steel bed and my head snaps off the pillow. Pain shoots down my neck. My blood pumps with adrenaline. Who is that?

“Hiya, Carr. Detective Mallory of the Branchtown Police.”

I sigh, take a breath. My heart begins to slow down. I wonder if cops do these things on purpose. And I know this guy, too, thought we were sort of friends. Mallory is one of only six detectives on the Branchtown force, a tall Irishman with graying red hair and hard blue eyes. We coached T-ball together three years ago.

“Hey, Jim. This an official visit?”

“It’s official,” he says. “I need to ask you a few questions about the incident at Shore Securities yesterday. First, tell me in your own words exactly what happened when you encountered your client Samuel Attica?”

“Samson, actually.”

“Okay. Samson Attica.”

I go through the whole episode ninety-nine-percent truthfully, using enough detail to make myself comfortable with the story. But in the end, it’s a story. Of course I could see Mr. Vick had a gun. His famous Smith & Wesson. But I’m not ratting out the boss.

“You’re telling me you didn’t see a weapon in Vick Bonacelli’s hand?”

“He could have had a gun,” I say. “He could have had a box of candy, or flowers. I didn’t look.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not.”

“Why? Scared you’ll lose your job? Vick already told us he was the shooter.”

A much younger Branchtown detective scurries into my hospital room. It’s Mallory’s partner, I guess. The kid looks like an eighteen-year-old Eagle Scout. “Jim. I need to talk to you,” he says.

Mallory and the Eagle Scout are only out of my sight and earshot maybe thirty seconds, but Detective Mallory’s hot-wired when he saunters back to my bed. Flushed around the neck. Eyes brighter. Like a new user and current beneficiary of stimulant drugs.

“You own a pickup truck with a camper?” Mallory says.

“Yup.”

“A yellow 1993 Chevy with lots of rust?”

“Bought it three weeks ago.”

Mallory and his young partner exchange a glance. When my former T-ball coaching mate puts his gaze back on me, Detective James Mallory of the Branchtown Police Department thinks he’s holding a straight flush to my pair.

“Put your pants on, Carr. We’re going for a ride.”

Visit Jack Getze's website and read an excerpt from Big Numbers.

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

--Marshal Zeringue