5 Highball Exit (22 page)

Author’s Comments

For those who ask if this could really happen, here are the newspaper stories that set the little gray cells whirring. The first idea came from two newspaper articles in Canada about two different people who knowingly infected others with the
HIV
virus. The rest of the story was filled in by pieces from Florida.

On Tuesday, February
7
,
2012
, the
Herald Tribune
headline read, “After alligator kills, victim’s family sues homeowners’ group.” Before this unfortunate event, ninety-one alligators had already been removed from the pond by the homeowners’ association in the past. A representative said, “If you go walking around at night, you don’t know what you might find.”

Another idea: The same day, same paper, another headline read, “Pythons causing demise of species?” This article came from West Palm Beach. A growing population of pythons in the Everglades is causing unease and a fall in the number of raccoons, opossums and bobcats. Where constrictor snakes lurk, the population of these mammals has gone down as much as
99
per cent. My question is, when all those mammals are gone, what will the pythons dine on next?

I see another adventure in Sherri’s future.

An award-winning author, Phyllis Smallman was a potter before turning to a life of crime. She was the first ever recipient of the Crime Writers of Canada’s Unhanged Arthur award, and was shortlisted for the Debut Dagger by the Crime Writers Association in the
UK
and nominated for the Malice Domestic Award in the
US
. Phyllis divides her year between Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, and a beach in Florida.
Highball Exit
is the fifth book in the Sherri Travis mystery series. Phyllis is currently working on the first of a new series,
Long Gone Man
, coming in fall
2013
. Please visit
www.phyllissmallman.com
.