Patrick Lee's "Deep Sky"

Patrick Lee's first novel, The Breach, hit the world at the beginning of 2010. It was followed by a sequel, Ghost Country, and the final volume of the trilogy, Deep Sky, was released last week. The series tells the story of Travis Chase, a man who finds himself caught up in the chain of events surrounding the world's most violently kept secret.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to Deep Sky and reported the following:

Here's most of Page 99 of Deep Sky, starting with the first full paragraph near the top of the page. It happens to be the last page of a chapter, so it's a bit short in any case.

The setting is a Jeep rolling along a mountain valley road north of Ouray, Colorado. In the Jeep are Travis Chase and Paige Campbell, whose lives revolve around the Breach--a passage through which alien technology continuously enters our world. With them is Carrie Holden, an older woman who once worked closely with the Breach as well--and also knew Paige's father Peter before he died.

In this scene, the three of them have been discussing strange events that occurred decades earlier, soon after the Breach first formed. Carrie has revealed to them that Peter and a few others conducted a secret investigation back in those early days, delving into something that worried them badly at the time. Whatever they were looking into, they apparently got a handle on it and dealt with it--though perhaps only temporarily. This present-day scene in Colorado comes against the backdrop of a new conflict; some unknown party is revisiting the old investigation and trying to reverse what it accomplished:

"Whatever Peter did was in all of our best interests," Travis said. "Who could possibly have the motive to undo it?"

The words hung in the air. No one had an answer. Snowflakes swirled in the headlights like stars broken free of the sky.

"We need details," Paige said. "We need to know who my father met with in 1987. We need to find one of them, preferably one who still has a copy of the cheat sheet locked away somewhere."

"It'd be a tall order getting your eyes on that document," Carrie said. "It's right up there with finding the original Scalar notebook, which Ward probably burned in a vacant lot before he killed himself."

Learn more about the book and author at Patrick Lee's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Deep Sky.

--Marshal Zeringue