"The Kingdom of Bones"

Stephen Gallagher is a novelist, screenwriter, and director. His many novels include Nightmare, with Angel; Red, Red Robin; and The Spirit Box.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Kingdom of Bones, and reported the following:

As a teenager I had a fascination with old-time Penny Dreadfuls and turn-of-the-century thrill fiction. Tom Sayers was a leading character in one of those old story papers, The Marvel. Loosely – very loosely – based on an actual historical figure, the fictional Sayers was your classic Victorian hero. Clean-living, morally upright, and with a hero's enviable physical prowess.

These were the unsung narratives of the Age of the Great Storytellers. They gripped the masses, but they weren't made to travel. Haven't you ever bought the DVD set of a TV show you used to love, and realised with a twinge of sadness that what you're experiencing isn't pure joy, but rather that joy remembered?

It takes more than just the old material to recreate a form. My ambition with The Kingdom of Bones was to take the characters, settings and narrative pacing of those old stories, and to bring them to new life with the kind of themes and complex psychology that we look for in modern fiction.

Page 69 of the novel finds Police Superintendent Turner-Smith, "a formidable figure with a broad white moustache, a war wound and a walking-stick," in the back room of a public house. He's here to meet a man whom he believes to be Tom Sayers. The year is 1888 and the setting is the North West of England. Sayers is a former prize-fighter who's given up the ring, and now serves as the business manager to a small touring theatrical troupe.

Unbeknownst to Turner-Smith, the man across the table is an impostor. The real Tom Sayers is in the theater next door, watching his company perform. What's about to take place will deprive Sayers of his good name and his liberty, with consequences that will pretty much destroy any future he might have hoped for with the woman he loves.

Turner-Smith considered the man before him for a moment, and then decided that he could speak as one gentleman to another. They were more likely to have interests in common than in conflict.

“Take a look at this, please, Sayers,” he said, and placed before him one of the pasted-up sheets that suggested a link between paupers that had been mutilated without apparent motive, and the stage company’s progress around the country.

The other man read for a while, and then glanced up.

“Some of our less notable receptions.”

“The dates, Mister Sayers. Look at the dates.”

He read on for a while. Then he sat back in the attitude of a man conceding an argument that had already been won. “This is very revealing,” he said.

And Turner-Smith, who for the past minute had been given the opportunity for a closer study of his visitor, said, “Are you by any chance wearing greasepaint, Mister Sayers?”

The man threw the paper onto the table between them.

“Ah,” he said. “There you have me.”

Under the table, Turner-Smith reached out for his sword stick. He took care not to signal his intention. “Yet you are not listed on the playbills among the actors,” he said.

“Very true.” The man smiled. “I can see that you are too good a detective for me, superintendent.”

A few moments later, the man rose from the booth and walked out of the saloon. The four commercial travellers in the next booth were laughing so hard at a story that none of them noticed his departure. One took a draught from his mug and leaned back in his seat, only to splutter it out all over the table.

His fellows were slow to catch on. Their humour ebbed, where his had vanished in a flash.

“What the devil?” he said. “Something pronged me!”

And he turned in his seat to find out what it was.

Even though the story's main character is offstage in this scene, I should imagine that the page makes for a reasonable taster of the novel as a whole. I've always reckoned that the best way to test out a book is to pick a random paragraph or two; at the very least, they'll give you a sense of whether you connect with the author's voice. In this case I'd hope that page 69's combination of history, greasepaint and villainy will give any prospective reader a fair idea of what lies ahead.

Read more about The Kingdom of Bones at the publisher's website, and visit Stephen Gallagher's website and his blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Master of Verona"

David Blixt is a Shakespearean actor-turned-author. His first novel, The Master of Verona, combines Shakespeare’s Italian characters with the real people of Dante’s time.

He applied the Page 69 Test to the new book and reported the following:

Page 69:

The Count glanced up and swallowed his heart. All along the walls of San Pietro, those same walls he had scaled that morning, hundreds of helmets glinted in the light of the setting sun. Enough of them bore the outlines of bows to show that they were archers. But they did not hold crossbows. They held bows of yew.

Somehow, beyond all possibility, the Scaliger’s army had come. Worse, he had armed his soldiers – against dictate of emperors, kings, knights, and church – with longbows. A violation of every code of chivalry, it was political suicide. It was also deadly.

Instead of indulging in outrage, the Count was doing the math. Those weapons could drive an arrow three times the distance of any crossbow. It wasn't an army the Greyhound had brought. It was death, in the form of a hail of arrows.

Below the rows of archers, the Scaliger howled a wordless cry that froze the blood. Ponzino actually shivered at the sound. For a moment he believed it was the dog that had made the noise, so feral it was. The Count saw Cangrande throw his helmet aside in a show of contempt. Still standing in the stirrups, he lifted his reins in his left hand and kicked his horse into a gallop. The spiked mace in his right hand was poised and ready to crush his enemies. Behind him, against all reason, his followers charged, screaming for blood.

In that moment San Bonifacio understood. It was not courage, nor reason, nor a grasp of tactics. It was not honor, nor chivalry. It was a streak of madness that defied reason, thought, life. It was a kind of immortality, perhaps the only kind a man owns. For this heartbeat of time the Greyhound was more than human. He was the Angel of Death, descended from the heavens to reap a fearful harvest.

Ponzino was horrified. “They can’t possibly…”

Already knowing the worst, the Count said, “They already have. Run!”

All around them men in every state of readiness – sober, drunk, valiant, cowardly – fell back before that charge. They’d witnessed their daring leaders run to them for protection, and had felt unsure. They’d watched the Flemings, darlings of the fierce Asdente, run as if the devil nipped their heels. They’d seen men armed with bows along the walls. Now this giant, this impossibly fearless, murderous man, rode at them like Mars on the field of war.

The Paduans broke. The massive army began disintegrating into clusters of terrified men. In their desperate flight they shed their booty, their weapons, their provisions and their armor. Into ditches or into the Bacchiglione it all went as the men scrambled back to preserve their lives.

The Count of San Bonifacio didn't hesitate. Tossing his family armor aside, he turned his horse about, kicking hard. Grabbing the reins of the Podestà's horse, he dragged the stunned commander with him. Ponzino ripped every seal of office from his body, wanting no sign to mark him as Cangrande’s enemy. For the first time that day, the Paduan commander did not think of his honor. He thought only of his life.

In many ways this is an excellent microcosm of the whole. Action, honor, war, and a smattering of grand ideas all in one page.

This scene comes at the tail end of chapter six, as the villain of the piece is trying to hold together the invasion of a contested city. Suddenly the Greyhound of Verona, Cangrande della Scala, arrives out of nowhere to do battle. The Paduans have no idea that Cangrande is bluffing – he arrived with less than one hundred men, to face a force of three thousand.

Amazingly, that isn’t invention, it’s fact. Cangrande’s life is worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy – which is what this novel truly is. I’m an action-oriented fellow, though my action scene have two rules: 1) they need to stem from the characters and their ambitions; and 2) they need to move the plot along.

So, two huge battles, a siege, two duels, a horse race, a fire, a chase, and a few murders. Yeah, I’d say page 69 is fairly representative…

Read an excerpt from The Master of Verona and learn more about the book at the official website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Our American King"

David Lozell Martin's novels include the international bestsellers Lie to Me and Tap, Tap and the critically acclaimed The Crying Heart Tattoo, The Beginning of Sorrows, and Crazy Love. Of Facing Rushmore (2005), Martin's eleventh book, Elmore Leonard said, "What I like best about a David Martin suspense novel -- and it will grab you, I guarantee -- is that the man knows how to write."

Martin applied the Page 69 Test to his new book, Our American King, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Our American King begins a pivotal chapter in the novel, describing the narrator, Mary, and her husband, John, walking into the District of Columbia from their home in a Northern Virginia suburban neighborhood where they had been starving to death. Most of their neighbors had already dead — all this in the aftermath of a national calamity that has left people to survive or die on their own with no law, no order, and no operating government. Americans live in fear of marauders whom John and Mary call Patagonians.

On Memorial Bridge we encounter the first people of the District. They’ve been propped in sitting and leaning positions along the concrete railings and sidewalks of the bridge. When we see that many are missing hands, missing arms, we know it was Patagonians that made these killings. A few of the bodies have been decapitated and propped into sitting positions on benches, holding their heads in their laps. Thus we are welcomed to the nation’s capital, by a boulevard of atrocities.

This passage from page 69 shows the horror of what the calamity has done to America. Today, we assume the stability of the United States as an unalterable given, that our country is somehow immune to the vagaries of history. Page 69 of Our American King is harshly written in an effort to shake the reader out of this assumption about the immutability of the United States — to make the reader think and wonder, oh my God, could that really happen here?

Read an excerpt from Our American King and learn more about the novel at the publisher's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"God of Luck"

Ruthanne Lum McCunn is the author of the classic Thousand Pieces of Gold, which has sold over two hundred thousand copies, as well as the novels The Moon Pearl and Wooden Fish Songs.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new book, God of Luck, and reported the following:

Perhaps because 6 and 9 are lucky numbers, page 69 is pivotal: Ah Lung, who has been kidnapped from his village in southern China, is being forced into the between-decks of the devil-ship that will carry him and his fellow captives across the Pacific for labor in Peru. Can Ah Lung and his fellow captives yet overcome the armed devils? How?

Before Ah Lung was stolen from his home, he shared a passionate relationship with his wife Bo See, and she is as determined to find her husband and restore him to their bed as he is to escape and return to her. Missing from page 69 is her voice, their passion and devotion to each other — and the role luck plays in their struggles from opposite sides of the world to reunite.

But, then, that’s the reason God of Luck has 236 pages, not one!

Learn more about the novel and its author at Ruthanne Lum McCunn's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Devil, The Lovers & Me"

Kimberlee Auerbach is a writer and storyteller.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her just-released memoir, The Devil, The Lovers & Me: My Life in Tarot, and reported the following:

From page 69:

Zach left the next morning, kissing me good-bye on the forehead.

I was expecting him to send me flowers, leave me a voice mail message, something to acknowledge what had just happened. When I hadn’t heard from him by Monday night, I called.

We met up at a coffee shop near Washington Square Park the next day and he explained that he didn’t want to give “the sex thing” too much power. He didn’t want things to get weird between us. But things were weird. He was being a dick and I was upset. He didn’t apologize. But he did kiss me. That’s all it took. That’s all it ever took with him.

We had sex a few more times before he left for the summer. He tried to be better about keeping his eyes open, and I tried not to talk as much.

When Zach flew home, I wanted to go with him. I was dreading having to spend the summer by myself in Katonah, New York, where my parents were moving because they couldn’t afford the city, or Dalton, the private school where my brother and Dustin Hoffman’s kids went. Zach, on the other hand, had lots of friends, a whole life waiting for him back in Denver. I envied his long-standing history with a place. I wished I had friends from kindergarten and that my parents would stop moving.

I got a job at the local deli in Bedford Hills, where I made turkey sandwiches for hungry passersby — a far cry from modeling in Cologne and Paris. And at night, I listened to “Riders on the Storm” while staring at Zach’s red

First, let me just say that I love The Page 69 Test. I remember reading somewhere, I think in Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe, that if you cut a piece of a hologram, it will contain the entire picture. Page 69 is kind of like a cutout hologram piece.

When I read page 69 of my book, I was bummed. I wanted it to be funnier. My book is funny, goddammit! Then I read it again and was startled by how much it revealed of my overall story.

If you only read this page, you’d know I wasn’t very good at honoring myself. You’d know I looked to love and sex as a way of escaping feelings of deep loneliness and disconnectedness. You’d know I moved around a lot as child. You’d know my family used to have a lot of money. You’d know I used to model. Most of all, you’d know I was dramatic, young and melancholy. All true, and all of it connects to the bigger picture.

If you only read this page, you wouldn’t know that a tarot card sparked this memory, The Lovers card in particular. You wouldn’t know that this is a flashback book, in which I retrace my journey from childhood to adulthood, using a single tarot reading as the frame. You wouldn’t know that my book takes place in 2005, when I am 33, in a relationship that isn’t fulfilling my needs, once again, having a hard time honoring myself, looking to someone else for the answers, looking to someone else to save me. You also wouldn’t know I got crabs from an Argentine painter a few years after Zach and I broke up.

Learn more about the book and its author at the The Devil, The Lovers & Me website, Kimberlee Auerbach's MySpace page, and the Crucial Minutiae blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cutthroat"

Steve Brewer is the author of the Bubba Mabry mystery series and the Drew Gavin mystery series in addition to a handful of stand alone crime novels.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new book, Cutthroat, and reported the following:

From Page 69:

Chapter 11

Michael Sheffield's hangover was easing. Every day he spent in this dusty outpost, he woke with the most excruciating hangovers, the only available remedy liberal application of Bloody Marys.

His host, General Erasmus Goma, Supreme Military Commander of the Republic of Niger, insisted every night on toasting everybody and everything. Some nights, they got all the way down to favorite cows Goma remembered from his youth before the fat general toppled from his chair.

Diplomacy required that Michael match the general drink for drink, and manhood required, apparently, that the drinks be shots of Chivas Regal. Nothing else would do. Michael was more of a wine man, that was one reason he loved Northern California. But Goma had declared, "Wine is for women! Men drink whiskey!" End of discussion.

The protagonist of Cutthroat, corporate troubleshooter Solomon Gage, doesn't appear on page 69, but the page is representative of the book. The point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, and this is the first POV chapter for Michael Sheffield. It's also the first time the reader "visits" Niger, the African country that plays a vital role in the story.

Michael and his brother, Christopher, are the sons of billionaire Dominick Sheffield, Solomon's employer. They're up to no good in Niger, and it falls to Solomon to ferret out their scheme, even though it could cost him his job. On Page 69 and the rest of Chapter 11, the reader learns what an absolute crap-weasel Michael can be.

Page 69 also introduces General Goma, who's bent on taking over the government and lining his own pockets. The dialogue on wine vs. whiskey comes directly from a dinner party I attended with some officials from Nepal. I took the Nepali's drunken opinion and put it right in Goma's mouth. I love it when everyday life helps out like that.

Learn more about Steve Brewer and Cutthroat at his website and his blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Southern Fatality"

A freelance writer for more than ten years, T. Lynn Ocean has published in magazines nationwide. She is the author of the novels Fool Me Once and Sweet Home Carolina.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new book, Southern Fatality, and reported the following:

It's a question I've never considered before: is one page in Southern Fatality — specifically page 69 — representative of the entire novel? Hoping that it would be, since every page should add something to the story, I quickly found my advance copy of the book. The page in question is a scene between celebrity financier Samuel Chesterfield and the main character, Jersey Barnes. Chesterfield's son has just been kidnapped. While I'd probably select a different page if given the chance, I do think that a reader who happened upon page 69 would want to read more. Perhaps they'd flip back to page 21, where Jersey tells her long lost father that she had a boob job, compliments of U.S. taxpayers, to enhance her undercover abilities. Or maybe the reader would jump forward to page 99, a great fight scene where Jersey and her best friend Ox take down some bad guys at Wilmington's Water Street Restaurant.

My books aren't overly deep reads and I'll quickly tell anyone who asks that I write to entertain. It's my goal not only to pique a reader's interest, but make them laugh as they keep turning pages from a desire to know what happens next. It's also a personal goal to make each new book better than the last. So thanks, Marshal, for giving me the one page challenge. What a great reminder to eliminate any lackluster pages that a reader might want to skip over! Southern Fatality is the first of a new mystery adventure series featuring Jersey Barnes, and I'm in the process of going back over the manuscript for the second in the series, Southern Persuasion. Perfect timing.

Page 69:

This was a tough situation. Since it involved Samuel Chesterfield, the Feebies should be called, but as much as they tried, they couldn't be invisible. A professional would spot FBI boys in a second, and might just carry out the death threat that was in the note. Although any kidnapper who killed their captive would lose their bargaining chip, so it was probably an empty threat. On the other it may not have been an ordinary kidnapping. The murder, and now the missing son, were most likely tied to the computer data that Soup was working to decode. People, even billionaire financiers, just didn't keep a database of United States residents' Social Security information in a gym bag lying around on the floor of their penthouse condominium.

"I can't give a recommendation until you level with me."

"There's nothing to level with you about. My son is missing. He's a good boy and he wouldn't just disappear like this."

"Flowers?"

"I don't know who killed him, or why. It had to have been a random thing."

"Lolly's suspicions?" I didn't want to let on that I was formulating several of my own suspicions.

"Groundless. She may think I've been acting odd, but she doesn't know me well. We've only been married less than a year."

"You have several options," I said carefully. "The local police, the sheriff's office, the SBI — State Bureau of Investigation, private investigators… or all of the above. I can't really say until I see the note, talk to some people and get a line on who may have taken him. If in fact it really was a kidnapping."

"Whatever your rate is, I'll pay it. I'm a smart enough man to know when I need outside help, and this is one of those times."

"Problem is," I said, "I only work for the good guys. And, while I am sorry that your son appears to be missing, I'm not so sure that you're the good guy in this scenario. I think you're giving me a Reader's Digest condensed version of the story."

Read an excerpt from Southern Fatality and learn more about T. Lynn Ocean and her writing at her website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Why Kerouac Matters"

John Leland is a reporter for the New York Times and former editor in chief of Details magazine. He is the author of Hip: The History.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new book, Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of ‘On the Road’ (They’re Not What You Think), and reported the following:

The page begins with a jazz scene from On the Road. The room is a convivial mix of whores and hootchy-kootchy sounds. But the horn player, Prez, is holding back. “You see man,” says Dean Moriarty, the book’s cowboy muse, based on Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady, “Prez has the technical anxieties of a money-making musician, he’s the only one who’s well dressed, see him grow worried when he blows a clinker, but the leader, that cool cat, tells him not to worry and just blow and blow – the mere sound and serious exuberance of the music is all he cares about. He’s an artist.”

Whenever a jazz musician appears in On the Road, he is a surrogate for a writer, teaching the narrator, Sal Paradise (based on Kerouac), how to find his voice and tell a story. Sal begins the book unable to tell a story – on his first trip he imagines himself in his friends’ eyes, “strange and ragged like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was ‘Wow!’” By the end he is given his prophecy, by a tall old man with flowing white hair who tells him, “Go moan for man” – in other words, go write On the Road. The musicians help him find this voice.

Page 69, which falls in a chapter called “Sal’s Guide to Work and Money,” looks at the lesson the musicians – especially the “cool cat” leader – teach Sal (and readers) about art and finance. Kerouac admired the work ethic of jazz musicians, who labored at their craft and accepted poverty in return. As I spell out in this chapter, he had a similar work ethic, often overlooked. In the six years it took to publish On the Road, he kept producing manuscript after manuscript, even as these were also rejected. The lesson in the club scene is not to let money get in the way of authentic, productive work. On the Road is not about running from work, it’s an embrace of authentic work.

Read an excerpt from Why Kerouac Matters, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blood and Soil"

Ben Kiernan is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, professor of international and area studies, and the founding director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. His books include How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975 and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new book, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, and reported the following:

The central argument of Blood and Soil is that millennia of global history offer rich evidence of genocide’s essential features, which are often recognizable in advance of a catastrophe. Therefore, during the gestation of new outbreaks, these features may be identifiable early enough to spark timely interventions that may prevent future tragedies. Over many centuries and across the globe, most perpetrators of genocide and extermination have exhibited similar ideological preoccupations underlying their wide political disparities. Four common features of genocidal thinking, often expressed well before the worst violence breaks out, are: racial or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, agrarian romanticism, and revivalist cults of antiquity glorifying ancient purity and power. Their combination is explosive.

Page 69 of Blood and Soil demonstrates how three of these ideological elements, present during a dark period in the history of ancient Rome, re-emerged among ruling circles in late seventeenth-century England. Chapter 1 of the book, entitled “Classical Genocide and Early Modern Memory,” documents the Roman genocide of the Carthaginians in 146 BCE, a campaign conducted at the urging of Marcus Porcius Cato, the Senator and Censor who relentlessly reiterated: delenda est Carthago (“Carthage must be destroyed”). Much of the ensuing catastrophe was forgotten for more than a millennium, but during the Renaissance, the ‘rise of antiquity’ and the rediscovery of classical texts made the ancient Carthaginians’ tragic fate much better known, and in some cases it became a new precedent for violent repression. In sixteenth-century colonial Ireland and Mexico, some commentators considered the victimized indigenes to be descendants of dispersed Carthaginian survivors. Page 69 of the book opens with another link between this ancient genocide and early modern exterminations:

Perpetrators even quoted Cato directly. During the English conquest of the Scottish Highlands, London’s secretary of state for Scotland, Sir John Dalrymple, wrote in 1691 of the MacDonald clan of Glencoe: “[T]here is no reckoning with them; delenda est Carthago.” Dalrymple meant what he said. He described the Catholic MacDonalds as “the only popish clan in the kingdom, and it will be popular to take a severe course with them.” He instructed the authorities in Scotland to use “fire and sword and all manner of hostility; to burn their houses, . . . and to cut off [kill] the men.” Dalrymple termed this “rooting out the damnable sept [clan].” King William signed orders to attack the clan leader MacIain of Glencoe “and that tribe” and “to extirpate that band of thieves.” Dalrymple urged “that the thieving tribe in Glencoe may be rooted out in earnest.”

These genocidal orders passed down the chain of command. When they reached Scotland, the commander in chief there, Sir Thomas Livingstone, knew that MacIain had surrendered two weeks earlier and sworn an oath of loyalty. Yet Livingstone told Lieutenant Colonel James Hamilton that “the orders are so positive from Court to me not to spare any of them that have not timely come in,” that he should “begin with Glencoe, and spare nothing which belongs to him, but do not trouble the Government with prisoners.” Dalrymple insisted that despite its surrender, the “thieving tribe” must be “rooted out and cut off. It must be quietly done.” Hamilton informed Major Robert Duncanson: “The orders are that none be spared.” Duncanson instructed Captain Robert Campbell “to put to the sword all under seventy.” It was “the King’s special command” that “these miscreants be cut off root and branch.” Attacking Glencoe in a snowstorm, troops killed MacIain and 37 of his men in their homes, and some women and children, but most of the clan escaped. Days later, when Hamilton reported taking prisoners, Livingstone ruled it “a mistake that these villains were not shot,” and he ordered all prisoners “dispatched . . . where they are found.” Dalrymple wrote: “All I regret is, that any of the sept got away.”(122)

In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler termed Roman history “the best mentor” and Carthage the most appropriate example of a victim, because of what he called the “slow execution of a people through its own deserts.” Blood and Soil also shows the importance to genocidal thinking of agrarian romanticism, along with racism, expansionism, and cults of antiquity like that of classical Roman imperialism.

Read an excerpt from Blood and Soil, and learn more about the book at the Yale University Press website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bad Thoughts"

Dave Zeltserman's dark short crime fiction has been published in many venues. His first novel, Fast Lane, received numerous praise, including Ken Bruen calling it one of "the most entertaining debuts since Jim Thompson" and Poisoned Pen Bookstore including it as one of their top hardboiled books of the year.

Zeltserman applied the Page 69 Test to his latest novel, Bad Thoughts, and reported the following:

Bad Thoughts is a mix of horror and crime, written in a tense, fast-paced style. The book focuses on Bill Shannon, a cop from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is plagued by nightmares stemming from his mother's brutal murder. Each year as the anniversary of her death approaches, Shannon's nightmares get progressively worse until he blacks out and disappears from sight. This year marks the 20th anniversary of his mother’s death and women are being killed in the same grisly manner, and for reasons not yet fully disclosed their murders are effecting Shannon very badly. Page 69 is from a chapter from Shannon’s wife’s POV, and details her anxiety over what she knows is coming:

It was all starting up again. A week ago he jolted up in bed at four in the morning, moaning, his body soaked in sweat. It took her almost a half hour to get him out of it. Since then, the nightmares had come nightly. After the nightmares came the moodiness, the depression, his just staring into space. She didn’t have a clue if he’d gone to work today. She had tried calling home a half dozen times and no one answered, but that didn’t mean a thing. If he was home, he’d just let the phone ring. Probably wouldn’t even be aware of its ringing.

Stylistically this page is representative of the rest of the book, and it hints at the noirish characteristics and psychological unraveling that is going to occur. The book is very violent with a high body count, and there is a paranormal (or metaphysical element depending on how you view things), and page 69 helps set the groundwork for what’s coming.

Yeah, I’d say it’s representative.

Read more about Bad Thoughts at the publisher's website and at Zeltserman's website and his blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Spanish Bow"

Andromeda Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction. Among her nonfiction works are travel and natural history guidebooks to Alaska and Mexico, as well as a travel narrative, Searching for Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez: A Makeshift Expedition Along Baja's Desert Coast.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her just-released debut novel, The Spanish Bow, and reported the following:

“I lifted the lid on the grand piano and pressed one of the white keys. To my astonishment, there was no sound. I tried a few more keys and then banged out a chord: nothing.

‘Broken,’ Alberto said as he entered the room, coughing. ‘And scavenged for parts. But for dinner parties, it seats six or more – with the lid closed, of course.’”

A soundless piano, a depressed teacher with a suspicious past, no sign of a cello: this is what my main character finds when he arrives at the home of his first cello tutor in anarchistic Barcelona. Not a very promising start for a young boy arriving in a new city, hoping to find music and light and life.

It occurs to me now that silence and people’s various responses to it is, in fact, a recurring motif in The Spanish Bow. The novel tells the story of three musicians struggling to develop their art – and to discover the purpose and power of art – at a time when Europe is descending into poverty, nationalism, and war.

Ultimately the cellist, Feliu, will take his cue from Alberto’s broken piano and become silent himself: unwilling to perform anymore, given the fact that music has proven unable to help the Spanish Republic, save loved ones, or make the world a perfect and just place.

But another character, the flamboyant pianist Justo Al-Cerraz, deals with decay and despair another way. When he encounters broken pianos in small, dusty Spanish villages (page 256) it only goads him into more stunning performances: “If keys were missing, it only increased the suspense as Al-Cerraz improvised around them, aping consternation, his black shock of hair more unruly with each passing hour.”

Which is not to suggest that Al-Cerraz – a womanizer, opportunist, and politically irresponsible collaborator – is the hero of this story. Or is he?

Read an excerpt from The Spanish Bow, and learn more about the book and author at Andromeda Romano-Lax's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Head Games"

Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist, editor and fiction writer. His short fiction has appeared in literary magazines, anthologies and several online crime fiction sites. His nonfiction books include Art in the Blood, a collection of interviews with 20 major crime authors which appeared in 2006, and Rogue Males: Conversations and Confrontations About the Writing Life, a second collection of interviews to be published by Bleak House Books.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his just-released debut novel, Head Games, and reported the following:

Head Games centers on Hector Lassiter, a legendary Black Mask Magazine-era crime writer turned novelist and screenwriter.

The line between Hector’s crime fiction and his life is at best, blurry. Hector also exerts a kind of treacherous pull on those around him. As one pivotal character introduced on page 69 of my novel later remarks on being in Hector’s presence: “You find yourself warped or transformed by his writing. You find yourself speaking in the cadence and language of his characters. In his presence, you sometimes feel like a character in one of his books.”

Hector is 57 when Head Games opens. He has recently lost a child and, a short time later, his wife. (Rumor has it Hector may have contributed to his own widowing…)

Head Games opens in a cantina in Juarez, Mexico where Hector and a young poet-cum-freelance writer sent to profile Hector for True Magazine gain possession of the long-ago stolen head of Francisco “Pancho” Villa.

Legend has it Villa’s skull was filched on orders of the grandfather of U.S. President George W. Bush for the Yale fraternity Skull & Bones.

Head Games mixes fact and fiction and brings Hector into contact with several historical personages. Some key scenes unfold on the set of Orson Welles’ noir classic Touch of Evil. On page 69 of Head Games, Hector is reunited with his old friend (and sometimes bedmate) Marlene Dietrich. Hector and Marlene are united/divided by their vexed relationship with author Ernest Hemingway. Their ensuing exchange eventually inspires some lines from the film:

The trailer door opened a crack — opened with a squeak. This dark face with chiseled cheekbones was peering at me; disarmingly dark hair and burning eyes. Marlene turned her head a bit; considered me through the cracked door.

I was taken aback by her hesitation. It had been a few years, granted. We hadn’t crossed paths since Paris, during the liberation…staying in touch by phone. It had been a few miles and a few too many drinks, maybe. But, Jesus Christ, had I truly slid that much? I said, “Christ, Kraut, don’t you know me? I’m Hector Lassiter.”

Marlene Dietrich smiled. She feinted a playful swing at my chin. She held her thumbs just like Papa had taught her to so she wouldn’t break them on impact. Gutturally, she said, “Ah, Hec’, you look like hell, sweetheart.”

Within a few pages, a machine gun attack breaks out on the set of Welles’ film, and a chase ensues that stretches across the desert southwest and several decades of American history, eventually resulting in Hector crossing paths with a Yale alum named “George W.”…

Read an excerpt from Head Games and learn more about the novel and author at McDonald's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue