Which Page Was That Again?

Ever since last August, Marshal Zeringue of the fine Campaign for the American Reader blog has been conducting an unusual survey of writers and their books. Based on Marshall McLuhan’s conviction that “you should choose your reading by turning to page 69 of a book and, if you like it, read it,” Zeringue and the authors themselves have been looking at the 69th pages of new or otherwise noteworthy books, just to see if McLuhan’s theory holds up.

Many of the works under consideration have fallen into the crime-fiction category, including: Kevin Guilfoile’s Cast of Shadows, Linda L. Richards’ Calculated Loss, Libby Fischer Hellman’s A Shot To Die For, Brian Freeman’s Stripped, Jason Starr’s Lights Out, Anne Frasier’s Pale Immortal, Bill Crider’s Murder Among the OWLS, Laura Lippman’s What the Dead Know, Steve Hamilton’s A Stolen Season, Robert Ward’s Four Kinds of Rain, Dana Stabenow’s A Deeper Sleep, and Mark Coggins’ Candy from Strangers.

But as Zeringue explains, his collection of page 69 posts--more than 170 in number already--“is getting awfully large and starting to crowd out some of the other postings on the blog.” So he’s created a whole new Page 69 Test site.

We look forward to more crime-fiction works making the cut.