Champagne for Buzzards

Spunky, smart-mouthed, Sherri Travis just blew into town in her Big Red shiny pickup truck with a trail of black, ugly buzzards in hot pursuit. So, who put the dead body in the back of Big Red? Sherri really doesn't want to know since she is focused on giving her boyfriend, Clay Adams, a surprise birthday party at his Riverwood Ranch. Guess what? Sherri winds up right in the middle of another kind of surprise - the unpleasant kind.

Champagne for Buzzards is the fourth book in the Sherri Travis series written by Phyllis Smallman. It's no wonder that Smallman was placed in the top six mystery authors, for summer reads 2010, by Good Morning America. Her 'trailer-trash' character is bigger than life even when she tries to clean up her act and put on a veneer of respectability.

In the company of her father, Tully, Uncle Ziggy and best friend Marley, Sherri takes up temporary residence at Clay's ranch. She encounters a diabolical horse, a seven foot snake and a mongrel dog but that isn't the worst of her troubles. Something strange is going on in the woods that surround the ranch house. Four-wheelers are roaring through the peaceful landscape, loaded rifles laying across their handle bars. Psychotic next door neighbor, Boomer Breslau, has taken a perverted fancy to her. Sherri's mouth and actions inflame his obsession until he vows to not only kill her - but everything on Riverwood. His cousin is the sheriff so when things turn nasty there is no place for Sherri to run.

High tension, wonderful descriptions of the Florida countryside, and a very real, heartbreaking theme of man's inhumanity toward man makes this book a must read.