The Page 69 Test: "Pretty Girls Dancing"

Monday, January 15, 2018

"Pretty Girls Dancing"

Kylie Brant is a native Midwesterner and resides in Iowa. She has the distinction of selling the first book she ever wrote. That began a career that has spanned forty novels.

She’s garnered numerous nominations and awards, including twice winning the overall Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence in mystery and suspense, and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times. Brant is a three-time RITA nominee and has been nominated for five RT awards. Her recent novel, Pretty Girls Dancing, was a #1 Amazon bestseller.

Brant applied the Page 69 Test to Pretty Girls Dancing and reported the following:

Pretty Girls Dancing is my thirty-ninth novel. Seven years ago, fourteen-year-old Kelsey Willard disappeared, and was presumed dead. She left behind a fractured family--a mother out to numb the pain, a father losing a battle with his own private demons, and a sister desperate for closure. But now another teenage girl has gone missing. It's ripping open old wounds for the Willards, dragging them back into a painful past, and leaving them unprepared for where it will take them next.

Pretty Girls Dancing is told in five revolving viewpoints: Whitney, a recently kidnapped teenage girl; Janie, the sister of Kelsey Willard, who was kidnapped seven years earlier and is a presumed victim of the Ten Mile Killer; Claire Willard, Kelsey and Janie's mother; David Willard, Kelsey and Janie's father; and Mark Foster, a BCI investigator on Whitney's case. Page 69 is fairly representative of the book, as it’s a turning point in the story. Mark Foster is just leaving the home of Whitney DeVries. The ballet slipper he saw on the girl’s bedroom floor has him remembering the case files from the unsolved Ten Mile Killer case. All the victims’ bodies' had been discovered clad in a leotard, a tutu, tights and ballet slippers. Many of them had taken dance.
Suddenly in a hurry, Mark headed through the door and down the hall, with Shannon at his heels. Moments later he was hunching against the wind's bitter bite as he hastened to his car. If he did speak to the other agent tonight, he knew better than to share the thought that had struck him as he'd contemplated that ballet slipper. The older man would chew his ass. Probably rightfully so.

He slipped into the vehicle. Started it. The memory of the dance shoe refused to be shunted aside. It looked like thousands of others worn by girls across America.

It also looked like those worn by the dead victims of the Ten Mile Killer.
The page has Mark coming to the conclusion that to save one girl, he must first solve the riddles that died with another--Kelsey Willard herself. I hope that reading page 69 would intrigue the reader enough to want to read on to discover the truth about the two missing girls.