Wendall Thomas takes us to a fantasy island for CHEAP TRILLS

HALLIE EPHRON: One of the most delightful people writing crime fiction these days is Wendall Thomas. She's hilarious and a wonderful writer and just one of those people you feel so happy to know. Her first Cyd Redondo (great name!) book was notable for, as I recall, snakes in suitcases.

Her new series book, CHEAP TRILLS, takes readers on another memorable trip... I'll let her explain.

WENDALL THOMAS: Whether we favor travel by air, sea, RV, or our own favorite armchair, I believe most of us have one special travel destination we dream about—a place so gorgeous, so romantic, so remote, or so fascinating, that we feel it will change our lives forever.

When Elizabeth Gilbert published Eat, Pray, Love in 2006, she launched a million travel fantasies—or ten million, if you count her book sales. Although the memoir visits Italy and India, her final destination in Bali might be the most fantasy-inducing, since that’s where Gilbert herself found true love—for a few years at least.

The newest Cyd Redondo mystery, Cheap Trills, set in early 2007, finds the Brooklyn travel agent doing everything she can to cool her senior citizen clients’ Eat, Pray, Love Bali fever.

First, there’s the cost, since few of her fixed income clients realize Gilbert received a $200,000 advance to finance her trip which, as Cyd says, “covers a lot of ashram.”

Then there’s the flight—a 51 hour journey with multiple connections and the accompanying chances for missed planes and lost luggage. Further, Bali is full of active volcanos, thieving monkeys, fatal falling coconuts, poisonous snakes, and lacks senior discounts, wheelchair ramps, and emergency rooms. Plus, she’s had clients used as unwilling “mules” before, and Bali is especially harsh on smugglers, like execution harsh.

When Cyd’s mother books an “Eat, Pray, Fall in Love” package behind her back, and the trip goes wrong, Cyd heads to the mystical island armed, as usual, with nothing but theoretical knowledge. And her purse.

Both the plot and the comedy in a fish out of water story come from the space where the known meets the unknown. Here are a just a few of the hundreds of fascinating things I learned about Bali to ambush Cyd with in Cheap Trills.

-Many people in Bali consider redheads—like Cyd—to be demons.

-Bali, the only Hindu island in all of Indonesia, operates on three calendars. The most important in terms of daily life and religious practice, consists of 210 days—not our 365.

-Balinese babies may not touch the ground for their first 105 days (or 210 in some communities). Infants are considered to be holy incarnations of former ancestors, and must be kept off the impure ground until they are old enough for an elaborate ceremony, where they are welcomed to the physical world and receive their names.

-70% of households in Bali and across Indonesia have birds as pets. For perspective, 45% of US households have dogs.

-The only bird which is indigenous to the island is the Bali starling. In 2007, when the book is set, it was reported there were only seven left in the wild.

-Sarongs are mandatory for entry to any temple.

-Gas for scooters and autos is often sold by the side of the road in recycled vodka bottles. 

-Since 2004, the largest global market for Tupperware has been Southeast Asia.


-Almost all Balinese natives have one of these first names, depending on birth order: Wayan, Made, Nyoman, and Ketut. If there’s a fifth child, it starts over.

-Durian, considered a delicacy in Bali, has been described as the most foul-smelling fruit in the world. Its aroma has been compared to raw sewage, rotting flesh and smelly gym socks, combined.

-There is one snake removal expert who services the whole island and everyone knows his name. It’s Ron.

Reds and Readers: Do you have a fantasy destination you’ve yet to visit? And if you’ve been lucky enough have your dream vacation, was there anything that took you by surprise?

More about Cheap Trills: (back cover copy)
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 Redondo Travel senior citizen clients are dying to head to exotic Bali. But the travel agent in her 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 arch nemesis, Peggy Newsome. Of course, Bridget and her friends wind up stranded and smack dab in the middle of a local murder investigation. Now Cyd must respectfully navigate Balinese culture, battle songbird smugglers and thieving monkeys, commandeer a funicular railway, infiltrate an underground Tupperware network, frame Peggy, and find the real killer, all while trying to keep three orphaned, endangered Bali Starling chicks alive in her purse.

Wendall Thomas bio:
Lost Luggage, the first book in Wendall Thomas’s Cyd Redondo series, was a Macavity and Lefty finalist for Best Debut Mystery, Drowned Under received an Anthony nomination for Best Paperback Original and 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, lectures internationally on screenwriting, and wrote the speech for Bonnie Raitt’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame