"Scotzilla"

Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until 2010, then immigrated to California where she lives on Patwin ancestral land. A former academic linguist, she now writes full-time. Her multi-award-winning and national best-selling work includes: the Dandy Gilver historical detective stories, the Last Ditch mysteries, set in California, and a strand of contemporary standalone novels including Edgar-finalist The Day She Died and Mary Higgins Clark finalist Strangers at the Gate. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, The Crimewriters’ Association, The Society of Authors and Sisters in Crime, of which she is a former national president.

McPherson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Scotzilla, and reported the following:

From page 69:

paediatric HDU was permanently exhausted and could fall asleep on the lip of a volcano.

‘I’ll join you, Roger,’ Noleen said. ‘In my own room, I mean.’ Noleen wasn’t a huge napper but she was an enthusiastic lunchtime drinker and siestas were standard. v ‘Of course, we understand if you don’t want to come, Lexy,’ Todd said. ‘After the dragon slasher.’

I nodded, then I thought some more. People were in and out of that cemetery all day every day: gardeners, mourners, dog walkers, our little band of enthusiastic weirdos. ‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘Lightning never strikes and all that.’

‘What is it this time anyway?’ I said, as we made our way through the streets to the familiar gates.

‘Skeleton,’ said Todd.

I sat up a bit straighter in the back seat.

‘How is that left for a PI to deal with?’ I said. ‘Do the cops know? Have they called forensics?’

‘Wait and see,’ said Kathi. ‘Oh no! Todd, park outside and let’s walk in.’

I looked where she was facing and saw that there was a funeral taking place in the cemetery today, a cluster of dark-clothed adults and children all processing behind a sort of cart with a coffin on top, pulled by two men in the national dress of some country I didn’t recgonise. They looked far too festive for the occasion.

‘Do we know where we’re supposed to be going this time?’ I said. ‘What if the coordinates take us to right beside the burial?’

‘Linda said hug the wall and walk clockwise round a quarter of the perimeter,’ Kathi told me. ‘That bunch’ – she braced both hands on my shoulders and boosted herself up to see – ‘are stopping in the middle.’

The cemetery was big enough that the mourners didn’t notice us as we picked our way through the outer ring of gravestones, clambering occasionally, tripping more than once when we encountered those flat slabs that are supposed to make the sexton’s life so easy. Before too long, we arrived the site of the latest incident.

‘Is it real?’ I said, peering at the skeleton.

‘You should know,’ said Kathi. ‘You’re the last one of us to have seen a skeleton.’ I shuddered at the memory then scrutinised what lay on the tufty grass of the grave in front of us.

We did so well with this last time, but Scotzilla gets a C- on the Page 69 Test. Well, a browser would find out that there's a crime, cops, forensics, and a PI. They would also discover that a cemetery features in the story and that the pge 69 skeleton is not the start of the mayhem, since “skeleton” is the answer to the question “What is it this time?” and is described as “the latest incident”.

I do think that “Of course we understand if you don’t want to come, Lexy. After the dragon slasher” is a speech that would make me want to find out more if I came across it. Dragon slasher? Perhaps, too, the chance to meet a “band of enthusiastic weirdoes” is going to be enticing to exactly the reader who might enjoy the novel.

It’s surprising that there’s no mention of the wedding that’s the background setting to the story. And it’s a bit surprising that the language is so clean and PG. I am sorry that the running joke about a group called the Sex Volunteers didn’t pop up on this page, although one of its parents did. Ach, but now I’m being mysterious for mystery’s sake.

Despite page 69 having a funeral on it, Scotzilla is a caper about a wedding and some pranks and a murder and California and love and family (blood and found) and I do hope you'll give it a go.

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Trouble Island"

Sharon Short is the author of sixteen published books. Her newest, Trouble Island, is historical suspense set in the 1930s on a Lake Erie island. Short is a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, for which she writes the column, “Level Up Your Writing (Life)” and teaches for Writer’s Digest University. She is a frequent, in-demand speaker at libraries, book clubs, and writing groups.

Short applied the Page 69 Test to Trouble Island and reported the following:

Trouble Island is set on a Lake Erie private island owned by a Prohibition gangster’s estranged wife, and narrated by an alleged murderess—forced into hiding as the wife’s servant—who plots her escape just as the gangster and a rogue ice storm make unexpected landfall.

Page 69 of Trouble Island reads as follows:

…the way she sang it made me realize I’d only been running away, not toward something. So I just finished lamely, “—it reminded me of home.”

To my surprise, Rosita asked with genuine curiosity, “Where’s that?”

“Southeast Ohio. Nowhere important.” The way she’d sung it, I couldn’t help but wonder what the song meant to her. So the question burst out of me: “Is that what you were thinking of? Home? You seemed somewhere else when you sang. I think that’s why it took me back—”

“That’s nonsense, doll,” Pony said. “But ma’am, it’s good to meet you, and uh, before you women folk get to gabbing, I’d love an introduction to your husband—I did some, ah, work for one of his men, over on Third—”

That took me by surprise. He hadn’t told me this. But then, he’d been coming home late, sometimes after midnight. And he had given me a more generous grocery allowance, and told me to get better cuts of meat for supper. I’d only asked him about it once. He’d backhanded me, and when my nose bled, told me that’s what I got for being nosy, and then cackled like he’d just made the cleverest joke.

Pony went on, “We came here tonight ’cause I was hoping to meet him, but, ah, it’s hard to get—” He stopped, stared longingly over at Eddie’s table, then jumped a little, straightening his shoulders like he was already a good soldier, for Eddie was making his way over to us.

I almost laughed at Pony. Couldn’t he see that Eddie didn’t notice him, or me? That Eddie’s smoldering gaze, the hint of a tender smile on his otherwise cruel slash of a mouth, was only for Rosita?

This page from Trouble Island captures the driving force of the plot: Aurelia (the narrator) is on the lam on a Lake Erie island owned by the estranged wife (Rosita) of a major gangster (Eddie). However, the scene on page 69 takes place before Aurelia must go on the lam, and before Rosita and Eddie’s marriage falls apart. Aurelia and Rosita are meeting for the first time, as Aurelia and her then-husband Pony go to a speakeasy where Rosita is performing. Their friendship ends up rocking both of their worlds.

I love that this page also captures Aurelia’s past insecurity and troubled life, which serves as a marked contrast with her current life on Trouble Island—the bulk of the novel—and her striving to break free from her past haunts and get a fresh start.

Learn more about the book and author at Sharon Short's website.

The Page 69 Test: My One Square Inch of Alaska.

--Marshal Zeringue