The first thing I do every day is decide who I am.

Am I a fake Tanzanian Fed-Ex driver after rhino horn smugglers (purple shorts and John Denver wig)? Am I an undercover cruise ship gigolo trying to save Australia’s last Tasmanian tiger (turquoise leisure suit and John Travolta wig)? Or am I leading a “Beatles” London Walking Tour to finance the release of abused dormice (paisley pants, pointy shoes, Ringo wig)?

I never know.

The criminals I’m up against are devious, greedy, ruthless, and relentless. They won’t be happy until they’ve poached or killed every endangered animal on earth for as much cash as they can get. The only way to win this war is with an eye for an eye, or in my case, a wig for a wig.

The wigs also help when you’re wanted by Interpol. The world is upside down when law enforcement spends more time after the people saving animals than the ones smuggling them, but that’s the way it is. So the only typical thing about my day is being undercover and on the run. I’m lucky to have a network on the ground who keeps me informed, but mostly, I work alone.

Until lately. A few months back, a clueless American travel agent named Cyd Redondo stumbled into the middle one of my anti-smuggling operations. I had to chloroform her, and tie her up. She undid the knots with the rhino horn I was looking for, then took down the head of the smuggling ring with a fishing net and some things from her purse. She took a bullet that day, too. So since then, I’ve sometimes given her temporary custody of the animals I’m trying to protect.

This time, she called me. Right now, there are only seven Bali starlings still alive in the wild and she’s wound up with three of their newborn chicks in her purse.

“What do I feed them, Hazelnut?”
“For the first couple of days, bugs only. Crickets are best, but you have to pull the legs off or they get stuck in their throats.”
“The crickets will be dead, right?”
“No, alive. Everything they eat has to be alive.”
“I have to pull the legs off live crickets?”
“They have a high pain threshold.”
“Really? And you know that, how?”
“I wrote a paper on it. The chicks eat mealworms, too, but for the first few days they can’t handle the exoskeleton of the adults, so you’ll need to sift through the worm basket to find the molted white ones.”
“I’m not sure I heard anything after worm basket.”

Amateurs. They can be frustrating, but the disappearing creatures of the world need all the fearless, kitten-heeled travel agents they can get.

Cheap Trills, A Cyd Redondo Mystery Book #4
Genre: Screwball Mystery
Release: October 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

After her mother sneaks off on an Eat, Pray, Love tour to Bali that goes horribly wrong, travel agent Cyd Redondo must outwit a ring of songbird smugglers and take on a killer, all while trying to keep three orphaned, endangered Bali Starling chicks alive in her purse.

It’s 2007 and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has Eat, Pray, Love fever. Every book club in town is devouring the bestseller and all of Cyd’s senior citizen clients are dying to head to exotic Bali. But the travel agent in Cyd only sees its dangers—three active volcanos, six venomous snake species, no wheelchair ramps, about fifteen possible tropical diseases, and the death penalty for smugglers.

So she’s hurt and furious, but also terrified, when her mother, Bridget, sneaks off with two friends on a Bali tour booked by Cyd’s archnemesis, Peggy Newsome. Of course, Bridget and her friends wind up stranded and smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation. Now Cyd must navigate Balinese culture, battle songbird smugglers and thieving monkeys, commandeer a funicular railway, infiltrate an underground Tupperware network, and find the real killer, all while trying to keep three hungry, endangered Bali Starling chicks alive in her purse . . .

About the author
The first book in Wendall Thomas’s Cyd Redondo series, Lost Luggage, was a Macavity and Lefty finalist for Best Debut Mystery, Drowned Under received an Anthony nomination for Best Paperback Original and both Drowned Under and Fogged Off were Lefty finalists for Best Humorous Mystery. Her short fiction appears in the crime anthologies Ladies Night, Last Resort, Murder-a-Go-Go’s, and Crime Under the Sun. She also teaches in the Graduate Film School at UCLA and lectures internationally on screenwriting.