Текст книги "Foul Play"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I've received so many emails and notes from readers of the Moose River series, telling me how nice it is to read about a blended family where their every day lives are intertwined with the mystery. Many folks have asked how the books came to be. The answer is simple: I am lazy and I'm ripping off my own life.

Now, before you get too excited, let me clarify what isn't based on my own life: I've never found a dead body in my basement, I've never found a dead body at a campground, I've never been involved in computer theft or the semi-abduction of a teenager, and I've never been banned from a youth theater production. (Yet.)

I am, however, married to my high school girlfriend, who I lost track of for twenty years. I am the father of four kids, not all of them biologically mine. We homeschool two of those four kids. And we do live in a hundred-year-old house that, um, usually needs a little work. There are certainly some traits and sensibilities that my wife and I share with Daisy and Jake, but for the most part, we exaggerate those in order to have a little fun and provide a little levity.

Last winter, we had a pipe freeze in the basement of our century-old home in a small town in Minnesota, just north of Minneapolis. We'd owned the home for about seven or eight months and to say it was showing its age is a bit of an understatement. The only way to reach the part of the pipe that was frozen was by getting up into a crawlspace that's about five feet off the ground and only about three feet in width. I climbed up on an old stove that had been left by the previous owner and shimmied my way into the dark, disgustingly dirty crawlspace with a flashlight. When I reached the end of the space, having navigated miles of cobwebs and other things that I didn't stop to identify, I found the frozen pipe.

I also found a small door.

After a little trepidation, I opened the door.

The kids were hoping for gold.

My wife was hoping for a secret tunnel that led to the bank on the other side of the railroad. (The home was originally built by the bank president who was brought to town by the railroad back in the 1880s.)

I was just hoping nothing leapt out at me.

Alas, it led to a large, square space, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, that we originally thought was a coal storage area but now believe to be a cistern that was used to hold water.

My recollection isn't exact, but I believe as I was describing the space to my wife, I made some remark like, “Well, it's big enough to hide dead bodies” and my wife immediately said, “That could totally be a book!”

And The Murder Pit was born.

So our lives aren't nearly as dramatic or exciting as the ones in the books, but I like to think they are just as much fun.

What's next, you ask? (I heard you. You asked.)

The fifth book in the Moose River series, is tentatively titled You've Got Blackmail and it will be out...in the near future. It will feature Stella, Jake's ex-wife, and a few other characters that keep showing up as the books get written. And an antique piano.

I can't tell you more than that or I might have to put you in the cistern...

Thanks for reading.

-Jeff