"Doing Harm"

Kelly Parsons is a board-certified urologist with degrees from Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins, and he is on the faculty at the University of California San Diego. He lives with his family in Southern California.

Parsons applied the Page 69 Test to Doing Harm, his first novel, and reported the following:

I’m happy to report that Doing Harm does in fact pass the Page 69 test!

Page 69 captures the beginning of a pivotal scene in the narrative: an otherwise routine surgery that goes horribly, horribly wrong. The outcome of that surgery initiates a completely unexpected chain of events that carries the protagonist—and the reader along with him—on a wild ride in which murder, blackmail, and deception figure prominently.

Learn more about Doing Harm at the publisher's website, and visit Kelly Parsons's Facebook page.

Writers Read: Kelly Parsons.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Eyes on You"

Kate White, the former editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, is the New York Times bestselling author the stand-alone novels Hush and The Sixes and the Bailey Weggins mystery series. White is also the author of popular career books for women including I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: How to Ask for the Money, Snag the Promotion, and Create the Career You Deserve. Before her fourteen-year stint at Cosmo, she was editor-in-chief of Redbook and McCall’s. White has also been a monthly guest on the Today Show and has done a regular turn on CBS This Morning.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Eyes on You, and reported the following:

About ten years ago someone gave me an interesting strategy for those moments when you feel that your creativity is sagging—for instance, if you’re stumped over a plot turn in the novel you’re writing or you can’t come up with a title to save your life. You’re supposed to open a book or newspaper to a random page and drop your finger onto a line. And then let that line inspire you.

I’ve used this trick and it’s worked on more than a couple of occasions. And that’s why I loved being asked to take The Page 69 Test. I was eager to see if a “random” page of my new suspense novel, Eyes on You, actually represented the entire book. My novel has lots of twists and scary moments and I was hoping one of them would turn up on that page.

But no such luck. In fact, there’s a little bit of a lull in the action on page 69. The protagonist of the novel, Robin Trainer, is a TV host who’s finally back on the air again after having lost her job two years ago—and fortunately the show’s a hit. Not so nice is the fact she has a secret enemy who wants to make a mess of things for her. Or at least that’s how it seems. There are still moments when Robin wonders if it’s all weird coincidences or just her imagination playing tricks with her.

On page 69 Robin is still reeling from having found a huge, butt-ugly cockroach in her coffee the night before—while she was drinking the coffee on the air. Not a pretty moment. At a staff meeting the next day, she doesn’t want anyone to realize that the incident totally rattled her.

“You recover from last night?” asked Lamar, one of the senior producers.

“I’m fine,” I said, smiling. “Except if you look closely at my forehead, you’ll see two antennas have started to sprout.”

People laughed. Carter did, too. It was the kind of comment I knew he would have made, and it seemed to do the trick, demonstrating to my co-workers I wasn’t flummoxed by the experience.

And yet I’m not sorry that page 69 is all about a brief lull in the action. Those are just as critical in suspense novels as the utterly terrifying parts. If the main character doesn’t have the occasional chance to relax and let down her guard down a little, the next time everything goes to hell—and it will—won’t scare her half to death. And it won’t scare the reader enough either.

Visit Kate White's website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blood Always Tells"

Hilary Davidson is the author of The Damage Done, which won the 2011 Anthony Award for Best First Novel. She is also the author of the The Next One to Fall, Evil in All Its Disguises and a short-story collection called The Black Widow Club.

Her latest novel, Blood Always Tells, is her first standalone. She applied the Page 69 Test to it and reported the following:

From Page 69:

Later, when she was in elementary school, [Dominique] asked Nana about that night.

Your mama said it was an accident, Nana replied.

Don’t you believe her?

She swore to me she never meant to shoot him. That means it was an accident.

She’d never been able to get Nana to say more than that. As she’d gotten older, she’d lost the desire to know more. It was a tragedy she wanted to bury.

Dominique took a deep breath. “Is that how you want me to kill Gary? Put a bullet in his head?”

“That would be appropriate, don’t you think? History repeating itself, in a way.” He was as relaxed as if he were offering to grab some takeout for her. “You’d never be able to tell anyone. Think of the stories. ‘Like Mother, Like Daughter.’ It would have to be our secret.”

“You’re serious?”

“I give you my word,” he answered. “I’ll let you live if you kill Gary. I can’t be any clearer than that.”

Blood Always Tells is a novel that explores whether a person can ever atone for the sins of the past, or escape the consequences of old crimes. In that way, page 69 captures its essence (even though it’s undoubtedly confusing to start in the middle of a character’s reverie!). In this scene, one of the book’s main characters, Dominique, has been kidnapped with her boyfriend, Gary. They’ve been taken to a house in the middle of a wilderness area, where they’ve been kept in separate rooms. Dominique is trying to reason with one of the kidnappers, but it’s not going well. Earlier, it seemed clear that the kidnappers were targeting Gary, not her, but in this scene, Dominique realizes that the kidnappers know all about Dominique’s family history, and they plan to use it against her. When Dominique was four years old, her mother went to prison for killing her father. Dominique has never been sure whether his death was an accident. Now that she’s being held captive, Dominique learns that the only way out is to repeat the crime her mother was convicted of.

Learn more about the book and the author at the official Hilary Davidson site.

--Marshal Zeringue

"After I Do"

Taylor Jenkins Reid is from Acton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Emerson College in Boston in 2005. She worked in entertainment and education before becoming a writer.

Her debut, Forever, Interrupted, was called a "stunning first novel," by Publishers Weekly. Kirkus Reviews called her second book, After I Do, "a must read."

Reid applied the Page 69 Test to After I Do and reported the following:

After I Do is about two people who used to love each other but simply don't anymore. They are stuck in a marriage that neither one of them finds fulfilling and they are both lost as to how to fix it. They decide to take a year apart from one another.

On Page 69, Lauren, the main character, is preparing for her husband, Ryan, to move out.

I grab a few of my things and prepare to leave. I can’t stay here for this. I can’t watch it happen. I am glad he is leaving. I really am. I keep telling myself that over and over. I keep thinking of my new freedom. But I realize that I don’t really know what it means—freedom. I don’t know anything of the practical ramifications of my actions. We have covered only the basics in terms of our preparation. We haven’t talked about what it would feel like or what our new life would look like. We’ve stuck to numbers and figures. We’ve talked about how to divide our bank account. We’ve talked about how to afford two rent payments. How to keep him on my insurance. Whether we need to file legally. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Ryan said, and I let it go. That answer was good with me. I certainly don’t want any of this in writing.

I told Ryan last night that I didn’t want to be here to see him leave. He agreed that it might be best if I left for the weekend and gave him his space to move out as he wished. “The last thing I need is you critiquing the way I pack my toothbrush,” Ryan told me. His voice was jovial, but his words were sincere. I could feel the tension and resentment under-neath. The smile on his face was the sort of smile car salesmen have, pretending everybody’s having a good time when, really, you’re at war.

I'm so glad this scene fell on page 69! I think it's very emblematic of the story as a whole. After I Do focuses a great deal on the small ways we can undermine and isolate each other, the day-to-day intimacies that can sometimes break a marriage. The toothbrush example is one of my favorite examples. The stakes are so high for Lauren and Ryan, they used to love each other, they have built a life together, and yet, they are willing to tear it down over the smallest things. Which isn't a slight on them -- it is often the smallest things that can kill you. Death by a thousand cuts, as they say. Once Ryan moves out, the story takes on a life of it's own as we follow Lauren's path to discover her true feelings about marriage -- so 69 is a great page to highlight. After this, it's all up and down hill for these two.

Learn more about the book and author at Taylor Jenkins Reid's website.

The Page 69 Test: Forever, Interrupted.

Writers Read: Taylor Jenkins Reid.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Thorn Jack"

Katherine Harbour is the author of Thorn Jack, the first book in a trilogy of dark fantasy novels released by Harper Voyager.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Thorn Jack and reported the following:

On page 69 of Thorn Jack the heroine Finn and her two new friends, Christie and Sylvie, have been invited to one of the Fata family’s infamous parties—an autumn revel with a Shakespearean theme. The scene reveals Finn’s, Sylvie’s, and Christie’s budding friendship while hinting at sinister elements beneath the party’s ordinary façade. When Finn discovers the sugar skull candies offered as treats, Sylvie and Christie say things that foreshadow some of Thorn Jack’s themes:

Sylvie handed (Finn) a tiny skull made of pink sugar. “All soul’s night is only a few weeks away. Eat these and honor the dead.”

Finn looked down at the candy and wondered how death could be treated so lightly.

And, a few paragraphs later:

Christie raised a tiny sugar skull. “‘To die: to sleep, no more, and by sleep to say we end the heartache—”

After Finn and her friends drink fake absinthe, the Fatas begin to seem strange and wild:

The burned-squash smell of the jack-o’-lanterns made (Finn’s) nose wrinkle. Musicians with pale hair and dark tattoos had taken the veranda stage, and electric guitars and the singer’s howling voice soon became deafening.

. . . she stopped to watch a magician in a striped black suit and no shirt pulling snakes from his sleeves—she recognized him as one of Jack’s friends, Atheno, the man with silver-and-black hair. As he draped what looked like a boa constrictor around his neck...

This party is the beginning of the Fata family’s attempt to seduce Finn, Sylvie, and Christie into their world. On this page, Finn and her friends are naive, oblivious—by the end of the scene, they realize they’re dealing with more than just a wealthy, eccentric family.

I think page 69 would make a reader continue on—it reveals a new friendship about to be tested and teases with a glimpse of otherworldliness.

Visit Katherine Harbour's website.

Writers Read: Katherine Harbour.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Black Current"

Karen Keskinen was born in Salinas, California. She has also lived in California’s San Joaquin Valley and in Wellington, New Zealand. She now resides in Santa Barbara where she is a full-time writer. She is the author of Blood Orange and Black Current.

Keskinen applied the Page 69 Test to Black Current and reported the following:

From Page 69:

The single sheet of paper was cream-colored. Thick and textured, it was of better quality than the envelope. I unfolded it. And for several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.

Your brother did not kill himself.

What are you going to do about it?

Since at least as early as 1862, we readers have adored a detective mystery. You see, 1862 was the year “The Notting Hill Mystery” was first published in Once A Week magazine.

But if we love a good mystery, we often love a good mystery series even more. In a series, we readers come to know the detective, her sidekick, and their fellow characters over time. We relish meeting up with our people again and again, preferably under hair-raising circumstances. Mystery readers haven’t changed much since 1862.

We haven’t changed much, but the zeitgeist has. After “The Notting Hill Mystery” was published, Freud strode through our collective unconscious, laying down his huge footprints. Popular psychology, our new religion, came hard on Freud’s heels, leaving a trail of angst and tears. Never would we view transgression in the same way again. And now we possess a robust appetite for knowledge about the characters’ off-page struggles, failures, losses, and sins.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wasn’t charged with the task of detailing the biography of Sherlock Holmes. His readers didn’t care to know about the detective’s infancy, his parents’ misbehaviors, or his childhood traumas. Modern readers, on the other hand, are hungry for all that. It’s not enough for us to know our detective has a wound. We want to know all about that injury, how it occurred, and how the healing is progressing - or not.

Of course, there are murders to be solved in the meantime, and the detective’s personal story can take a back seat. We are happy to meander through the chapters of the P.I.’s past life, exploring his or her psyche book by book, at a leisurely pace. But be assured, explore it we will.

In Black Current, page 69 takes up that underground story. Jaymie Zarlin has been struggling to come to terms with her brother’s death for three years, but till now she hasn’t questioned the facts surrounding it. The coroner’s judgment was unequivocal, after all: Brodie Zarlin hanged himself in the downtown jail.

For three years, Jaymie has had plenty of guilt to reckon with: why didn’t she step in sooner - or do more - or understand the severity of Brodie’s illness? But until page 69, she’d never questioned the verdict of suicide.

Now, the world wobbles on its axis. Brodie did not hang himself. And his death was no accident, either: you don’t accidentally place your neck in a noose. Jaymie’s world wobbles on its axis, and from page 69 onwards, it will not be put right.

Brodie Zarlin was murdered. Somebody out there knows all about it - and is ready to sing.

Visit Karen Keskinen's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Byrd"

Kim Church's short stories and poetry have appeared in Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prime Number Magazine, the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has received fiction fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center.

Born and raised in Lexington, North Carolina, Church earned her B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her J.D. degree from UNC School of Law. She has taught writing workshops in a variety of settings, from college classrooms to death row. She lives with her husband, artist Anthony Ulinski, in Raleigh, where she divides her time between writing and law.

Church applied the Page 69 Test to Byrd, her first novel, and reported the following:

Byrd is the story of Addie Lockwood, an independent single woman who, at 33, secretly gives birth to a son and surrenders him for adoption without telling his father—and without imagining how her decision will shape their lives.

On page 69, Addie, who works as a clerk in a secondhand bookstore, has returned to her cloistered life in North Carolina after a whirlwind New Year’s visit to her old friend Roland Rhodes, now a struggling musician in California. Addie and Roland have finally consummated their tenuous high school romance, and Addie doesn’t know it yet but she’s come home pregnant.

To get perspective on her relationship with Roland, she consults astrologer Warren Finch, my favorite minor character in the novel. Warren is a one-man Greek chorus, a soothsayer in plaid.

Visit Kim Church's website.

Writers Read: Kim Church.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Phantom Instinct"

Meg Gardiner was born in Oklahoma and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She graduated from Stanford University and Stanford Law School.

Gardiner practiced law in Los Angeles and taught writing at the University of California Santa Barbara. She’s a former collegiate cross-country runner and a three time Jeopardy! champion. She divides her time between London and Austin, Texas.

Gardiner applied the Page 69 Test to her new stand-alone thriller, Phantom Instinct, and reported the following:

Phantom Instinct is about two wounded survivors of a shootout, who work together to catch the prime gunman. The trouble? Nobody else believes the shooter exists. Harper Flynn worked as a bartender at the club that was attacked. Detective Aiden Garrison was severely injured during the shootout. Now they can’t convince anybody that the shooter is stalking witnesses to the attack—including the two of them. The more they learn, the more dangerous things become. The more they’re drawn to each other. And the more distrust builds between them.

On page 69, they confront each other.

“I’m trying to convince the department that the third shooter exists and is back.”

“Then you’re going to have to convince me.”

His eyes were hidden by the sunglasses, his face clenched with some cool bitterness. Sorenstam had planted a seed of suspicion, and it was growing twisted roots. Harper felt she was on the edge of something very bad. It was circling. She had only a little time to get out from under it, or her last chance to come out of this the right way would be gone for good.

“You want to know the truth? I’ll tell you. And Sorenstam can dig up the court records and rip open everything that was supposed to be confidential. You can corroborate everything I’m going to tell you. But—”

“No buts.”

“But you have to tell me everything about your traumatic brain injury. The issue with misidentifying people. Straight up.”

Page 69 is where Aiden and Harper hit the crux of the problem between them: He has just learned that she’s an ex-thief. She has just learned the reason he can’t return to duty: his head injury has resulted in Fregoli Syndrome, a rare kind of face blindness. It can cause him to believe that the person he’s looking at is actually somebody else in disguise. They each have ample cause to mistrust the other. Now they have to decide whether they can work past that to catch a killer.

Writers Read: Meg Gardiner.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Patron Saint of Ugly"

Marie Manilla is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Prairie Schooner, Mississippi Review, Calyx Journal, SouthWrit Large, and other journals. Her novel Shrapnel won the Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel. Still Life with Plums: Short Stories was a finalist for both The Weatherford Award and ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year.

Manilla applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Patron Saint of Ugly, and reported the following:

It’s a simple scene: Grandpa Ferrari and Nonna arrive at Garnet’s house to celebrate her First Communion. Grandpa parks his car at the foot of the hill, walks halfway up the steep steps, and pauses to swab sweat from his neck, grumbling: “You trying to give me a heart attack with those steps, Angelo?” Right behind him is Angelo’s brother who fans the flames: “You need an elevator to get up this hill, Pop. It’s even worse in the winter.” This seemingly trivial act reveals the disdain Grandpa feels for Garnet’s father, who couldn’t even buy the right, flat-lotted house. So much of The Patron Saint of Ugly is about sibling rivalries: Garnet and her brother, Garnet’s father and his brother, even Grandpa Ferrari and his brother back in Italy. It’s also a novel about the way parents can, or cannot, love their children. Grandpa can’t love his youngest maybe-not son, but neither can Angelo love his youngest child, Garnet. He just can’t get beyond the port wine birthmarks covering her body that look like a map of the world. It doesn’t matter that she may be able to perform miracles—and indeed that only adds to her freakishness in his view. Still, Garnet craves her father’s love, just as Angelo craves the love of Grandpa Ferrari.

Visit Marie Manilla's website.

Writers Read: Marie Manilla.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Child of a Hidden Sea"

A.M. Dellamonica is the author of Indigo Springs, which won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Sci-Fiction and Strange Horizons, and in numerous anthologies; her 2005 alternate-history Joan of Arc story, “A Key to the Illuminated Heretic,” was shortlisted for the Sideways Award and the Nebula Award. Dellamonica lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new book, Child of a Hidden Sea, and reported the following:

From page 69:

"Sofe, you're starting to scare me a little."

"Sorry, Bramble." She pulled herself up, feeling heavy-limbed, and hauled her stuff into the house. She pulled out her camera, popped her battery into a charger and the chip into the laptop computer that lived by the kitchen island. Then she opened the fridge.The yogurt was green and the only thing that looked edible was an apple.

Haven't had fresh fruit in a week, she thought, and yet what I want is pizza.

I was thrilled to see that page 69 of Child of a Hidden Sea is a scene between Sophie Hansa and her little brother, Bramwell, because their relationship is very much the heart of the book.

The scene occurs after Sophie has just returned from another realm, a world called Stormwrack. She found the place mysterious and exciting, but she had just begun to explore it when she was essentially deported back home to San Francisco by bureaucrats in the capitol city, a sort of United Nations at sea called The Fleet.

Bram's a scientist, and he was so wrapped up in research that he didn't notice she was gone. He's feeling guilty and working to hide it. Theyre both a little freaked out, but as they reconnect you can see the affection and mutual goodwill between them. It's warm; I like it.

Is this representative of the whole book? Some of it, definitely. It doesn't show off the encounters with monsters or clashes with scheming homicidal pirate types, or the near-sinking of the sailing vessel Nightjar in a magically-induced storm at sea (Nightjar and her crew also appear in my prequel story, "Among the Silvering Herd", but it's a good snapshot of these two characters together in a safe moment.

Visit A.M. Dellamonica's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Bliss House"

Laura Benedict’s latest dark suspense novel is Bliss House, praised as “Eerie, seductive, and suspenseful,” by Edgar award-winning author, Meg Gardiner. Benedict is also the author of Devil's Oven, a modern Frankenstein tale, and Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts and Isabella Moon.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Bliss House and reported the following:

What luck! While page 69 is not an entire printed page in the book, it does begin one of the most critical chapters in Bliss House.

Bliss House is my love letter to the great haunted house novels, The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson) and Hell House (Richard Matheson). But there’s a murder mystery as well, and the murder comes soon after this scene.

By page 69, Rainey Bliss Adams and her daughter, Ariel, are well-settled into Bliss House. They’ve moved from St. Louis, where Rainey’s husband (Ariel’s father), Will, was killed when their house exploded from an accidental gas leak. Ariel is fourteen years old, scarred, and very withdrawn. She secretly loves the massive, mysterious house that’s surrounded by tattered gardens, deep woods, and orchards, and believes it’s helping her heal. She also has seen her father’s ghost, which has told her he’ll be watching over her.

But Bliss House is not a quiet, benign sort of house. There are strange noises and they’ve heard stories about its tragic past. Ariel herself has been under attack from invisible assailants, but Rainey is having a hard time believing that there’s something truly wrong.

Page 69 is the first page of Chapter 13 (appropriate, yes?). A sound wakes Ariel in the darkness of her room. She’s finally gotten to sleep after the big housewarming party her mother threw the evening before. At first, she thinks it might be her father who has awakened her, and she’s reassured by the noise of crickets coming from outside. But the sound continues, and she gets up to find its source.

This sound was inside the house. Not rhythmic, but insistent. Someone running. Voices, but not happy ones.

I won’t be afraid.

She gets out of bed to put on an elaborate silk robe she’d found in one of the house’s unused closets. (Neither she nor her mother have any idea who it belonged to. Just the idea of the robe worries Rainey.) The robe makes Ariel feel graceful, something she hasn’t felt in a very long time--at least not since the accident, which left her relying on a cane. Since she’s come to Bliss House she’s had to rely on it much less frequently, and she’s been in almost no pain.

The page closes with Ariel going out into the second floor gallery outside her bedroom door. She looks up to the third floor where she thinks the sounds are coming from. (No one sleeps upstairs.) We leave her in the moonlight that shines through the clerestory windows around the base of the dome painted with stars that crowns the top of Bliss House.

Visit Laura Benedict's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts.

--Marshal Zeringue

"All Day and a Night"

Alafair Burke's novels include the thriller Long Gone and the Ellie Hatcher series: 212, Angel's Tip, Dead Connection, Never Tell, and the newly released All Day and a Night. A former prosecutor, she now teaches criminal law and lives in Manhattan.

Burke applied the Page 69 Test to All Day and a Night and reported the following:

Excerpt from page 69:

Carrie’s list of documents to request was seven pages long by the time her cell phone buzzed against the table. It was Melanie.

“Hey, Melanie.”

“Are you all right?”

No “Hello.” No “Hey, it’s Melanie.” Just: “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

“I sent you an e-mail this morning. It bounced back—”

“About what?”

“What do you mean?”

“The e-mail. What was it about?”

“Oh, it was—it’s this dog. On a couch. He jumps up there but the owner has it booby-trapped.”

Carrie remembered how much Melanie had wanted to be a pediatrician. Now she seemed to spend her days forwarding YouTube videos.

“You’ve got to see it. Trust me, it’s hilarious. Anyway, I sent it to you, and then it bounced back with an automated message saying to contact the firm for details. Then I called your office and your secretary picked up and said you weren’t working there anymore. Is everything all right?”

That was the world Melanie knew, because it was the world they had grown up in. If you had a job and then you didn’t have that job, then something must have gone terribly wrong. People lost jobs; jobs didn’t lose people.

I swear I didn’t plan for this scene to land on page 69, but I’m glad it did.

Though All Day and a Night is the fifth book in the Ellie Hatcher series, I think readers will find that it reads like a standalone. It centers around convicted serial killer Anthony Amaro’s claim that he was wrongfully convicted and that the real killer is still at large.

Much of the book is told from the perspective of NYPD Ellie Hatcher who, along with her partner JJ Rogan, is tapped as the “fresh look” team to reinvestigate the Amaro case and scrutinize the integrity of the evidence used to convict him.

But an equal narrator in the novel is Carrie Blank, who opens Chapter 11 on page 69. Carrie is a young defense attorney who leaves an elite New York City law firm to represent Amaro on his wrongful conviction claim. Carrie comes to the case with an agenda of her own. Her half-sister Donna was one of Amaro’s alleged victims, so for her, this case is about finding her sister’s true killer.

Carrie is a favorite for me among the characters I’ve created. On page 69, you get a little taste of the world Carrie came from. She grew up in Red View, a fictionalized version of neighborhoods we know too well, defined by generations of poverty, crime, underemployment, lack of education, and general hopelessness. While Carrie was raised by a mother who constantly told her that if she studied hard in school and went to college, her half-sister Donna succumbed to the patterns of the neighborhood, falling into sex work and drug addiction.

But Carrie’s backstory isn’t a tale about good-sister-makes-good and bad-sister-gets-killed. Through Carrie, All Day and a Night explores how difficult it can be to find a path for upward mobility. While Carrie was able to make it out of Red View, most of her friends did not, including her childhood best friend, Melanie. Despite having a raw intellect that Carrie believes surpasses her own, Melanie never made it to college, in part because of a teenage pregnancy and an on-and-off marriage to a shady older boy who impregnated her. A part of Carrie always feels guilty for leaving her friend behind.

On a less serious note, page 69 also happens to contain a nice little Easter egg for readers who keep in touch with my online antics. That YouTube video of the dog on the sofa? Yes, it’s real. The dog is my French bulldog, Double. And the booby-trapped sofa is probably covered with his white hair as I write this.

Carrie may think that YouTube videos are a waste of time, but this particular one isn’t. Trust me.

Learn more about the book and author at Alafair Burke's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Dead Connection.

The Page 69 Test: Angel’s Tip.

The Page 69 Test: 212.

--Marshal Zeringue