The Sherri Travis mysteries take place in the bars along the mangrove coast of Florida. Most nights Sherri can be found at the Sunset Bar & Grill where she pours the drinks and listens to the stories. The Sunset is the crème de la crème of watering holes. Giant antique pulleys stir air, smelling of old leather, long ago Cuban cigars and expensive perfume, while cool jazz plays in the background. Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Holiday are the favoured entertainers in the Sunset.
Cool and elegant jazz wasn’t the background to Sherri’s childhood. She was raised to a different beat by a single mom in a broken down trailer at the edge of a swamp. Here’s how Sherri describes her mother. “Ruth Ann’s life was the epitome of the country and western songs that twanged from her radio from the moment she woke until long after she was asleep. In that occasional brief space when there was no man in her life to be disturbed by the noise, her radio played all night, probably to cover the fact there wasn’t anyone snoring on the pillow beside her. Country music was the background to every conversation we’d ever had, every meal and every argument. I only need to hear certain songs to have those times and emotions come rushing back. Mostly these memories don’t make me happy. They just made me remember the men in my mom’s life, men with names like Buck or Junior or some double-barrelled name like Ray-John.”
There’s one more bar where Sherri hangs out. The Gator Hole is out in the run down town of Independence. Here the Zydico music, foot-stomping and loud, plays from when the bar opens at eleven in the morning until it close at midnight. The Gator Hole, where the ranch hands shoot pool and spend their pay, is not for the faint of heart. “At the door of the bar, the noise from inside was enough to drive you back outside. Tully and Zig hadn’t lied about the place, an old-fashioned, nasty, dark-brown hole that time had missed. It was like coming home for me and I was grinning like a fool.
Inside it smelt of every beer that had ever been spilled on the floorboards and every bucket of grease that had been eaten there. The floor was made of some kind of wood that was beaten down and turned black from thousands of stomping boots grinding in the dirt. The bar, stretched along the wall opposite the doors, was so packed people had to stand sideways to get a place to plant their elbows and their beers.
This was the kind of bar I’d come of age in, the kind of bar where fights broke out as easily as laughter. It made my heart beat faster and my lips stretch into a crazy smile of joy.”
From the radio playing in old pick-ups or loud rap music pulsing from a big-assed SUV, music weaves its way through the stories.
As for me, I love all kinds of music. From jazz to Mozart, it inspires me like nothing else and carries me beyond where I can go on my own. If I’m actually at the computer writing, classical music is my choice. It doesn’t pull my out of my own head space but still helps me imagine. When it comes to inspiration for Sherri stories there is nothing like the lyrics to country and western songs – music for murder and other crimes along the mangrove coast.
In 2010 Good Morning America picked the Sherri Travis mysteries series as one of six for a summer read.
Phyllis Smallman’s first book, Margarita Nights, was shortlisted for the Debut Dagger in the UK and won the Unhanged Arthur from the Crime Writers of Canada. It was also nominated for an Ellis Award for best first novel. Champagne For Buzzards, the fourth book in the series, was chosen by Zoomer Magazine as a cottage read for the summer of 2011.
Before turning to a life of crime Smallman was a potter. She now divides her time between a beach in Florida and an island off the west coast of British Columbia.
Ella sings Summertime here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pdyiK5kziw
This has got to be the best title in a long time CHAMPAGNE FOR BUZZARDS. Great review Brian.
A-9