"Dog On It"

Spencer Quinn lives on Cape Cod with his dog, Audrey.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Dog On It, and reported the following:

Page 69 is not a bad representation of the book. Chet and Bernie are in the middle of interrogating Ruben, a lowlife character who may have information concerning the disappearance of Madison Chambliss, a teenage girl at the center of the mystery. We get a sense of Chet’s narrative style:

“Already told you,” Ruben said. “I drove her.” Or something like that. I didn’t really hear because at that moment my jaws were clamping around Ruben’s leg.

We sense Bernie’s intolerance of anyone disrespecting Chet:

“Call off your damn dog.”

“Language.”

“Oh, God, come on, man.” Ruben wriggled around on the floor.

“Chet?”

I unclamped. It took everything I had.

“Maybe take a minute or two, Chet.”

Bernie was right. I walked around a bit, snapping up the burger in an absentminded way.

But mostly we get to enjoy two professional crime solvers at the top of their game:

“Think,” Bernie said. “We really want to know, Chet and I.”

Ruben glanced at me, fear in his eyes, no doubt about it. I was licking burger juices off my lips. “Nothin’ happened,” he said. “I was feelin’ a little romantic. She wasn’t in the mood.”

“You don’t look like the romantic type.”

Ruben frowned in a thoughtful way, like maybe he was learning something about himself.

Read an excerpt from Dog On It, and learn more about the book at the Simon & Schuster website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue