Miriam Escapes a Reptilian Attacker

In THE DEADLIEST FEVER, Miriam ventures once again into The Pegasus, a sleazy waterfront inn, to investigate the death of a sea captain. She’d been in its public room before. In THE DEADLIEST HATE, she’d suffered its foul tang of putrefying garbage and the stench of human waste, but this time—Well, wait. I’ll let her tell you:

This time, except for the rats feasting on the puddles of fish chowder, I hardly noticed the dreariness of the public room though it still depressed me. In the rumpled apron of light from the greasy window, I spotted a signal lantern and lit it with the fire steel on the sill. Good thing. Just in time to spot an Egyptian spiny-tailed lizard before it swung its muscular spiked tail at my bare ankles.

This generally herbivorous, thirty-six-inch long lizard prefers the cool dark indoors during the day, even the public room of The Pegasus. But beware! It’s armed with a heavy muscular, spiked tail that it can swing with great velocity while it hisses and displays its small teeth.

But that’s only the first hazard Miriam faces in that squalid den of iniquity. To checkout the book trailer for THE DEADLIEST FEVER, Click here.