Saturday, January 10, 2009

"Never Tell A Lie"

Hallie Ephron is an award-winning mystery reviewer for the Boston Globe. She is the author of 1001 Books for Every Mood and Writing and Selling Your Mystery, which was nominated for both an Edgar and an Anthony award.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Never Tell a Lie, and reported the following:
Page 69 of Never Tell a Lie begins:

Glass swan head. The police had taken that with them.

Ivy Rose’s is taking a mental inventory of the items the police have just confiscated after searching her house for clues in the disappearance of Melinda White. Melinda was last seen a few days ago at Ivy’s yard sale. The glass swan head is a broken piece of a green Depression-glass dish that Ivy gave Melinda just before she disappeared.

Pregnant and within weeks of her due date, Ivy is still clinging to her husband David’s assurances that nothing happened when he took Melinda inside to show her around the house. He gave her a tour, then ushered her out the front door.

Now he apologizes and tells Ivy, “I should have told you earlier.”

Told me what? Ivy wonders, afraid to ask.

“The thing is, I didn't see Melinda leave,” he admits.

Ivy wants to believe David, to agree with his speculation that Melinda must have let herself out while David was getting her a glass of water. But that glass swan head isn’t the only troubling piece of evidence that the police found.

Page 69. It’s a moment in the book when Ivy discovers that her husband has lied to her. Is it an innocent lie or something more sinister? David has been the love of her life since high school, the one person to whom she’d trust her life and the new life within her. Now she begins to wonder how well she really knows him.
Browse inside Never Tell A Lie, and learn more about the novel and author at Hallie Ephron's website and blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue