Leonard Stein I was born in Bloemfontein, in the redneck heartland of South Africa. There, Darwin was a six-letter word and the elders of the town believed that fluoridation and television were a communist plot to soften the brains of the inhabitants of the country. At the prestigious Grey College my classmates, and even the ninetysomething teachers still remember me as "The Grey Bomber" after I caused an explosion which almost wrecked the laboratory and ended my ambition of becoming a chemist. I left for Johannesburg and entered medical school, qualifying some years later not cum laude, but cum difficulty. I got a job as an intern in the ward of the professor of internal medicine. On New Years eve I was all alone on duty when a patient was admitted in a coma. I hadn't the faintest idea what had happened to him or what to do. There were problems at the laboratory as the technicians had abnormally high alcohol levels in their blood after celebrating the new year with "medicinal" brandy. It was taking hours to get blood results. In addition the telephone system crashed so I couldn't contact my consultant to scream, "Help!" Running down the hallways to other wards, I found a doctor. I begged him to help me. "I'm sorry, I can't help you. I'm a pathologist." I treated the patient to the best of my extremely limited ability and he made a full recovery. I think I aged ten years. It subsequently transpired that the man had an extremely rare condition, which most physicians never see in a lifetime. In retrospect it is funny. Then it wasn't. I then went into pediatrics after which I decided to specialise in neonatology, dealing with newborn babies and mainly premature very low birth weight infants - something of the order of 1 to 2 pounds. I was fortunate to get a fellowship to the Neonatal Unit at the University of California San Diego which was directed by Dr. Louis Gluck who had formed the first neonatal intensive care unit in the world in the 1960s at Yale University. I have never worked as hard as during the two years I spent there. They were also among the happiest years of my life, working with dedicated people for whom the patient always came first. I also used to go and fetch sick babies from distant hospitals, using planes, and helicopters. I spent one month at the neonatal unit in Honolulu. The highlight was going to fetch a sick baby from the island of Kawai in a giant Hercules belonging to the US Navy. Following the two year fellowship, my wife and two children decided to settle in Israel. I currently work in a town twenty minutes from Tel Aviv -- provided you drive there in the middle of the night and the police don't catch you for speeding. In the late 1980s I joined an English short story writing group. We had a strict taskmaster who made us each write a short story every two weeks. Those members who didn't bring a new story to the meeting, were subjected to her withering eye. The word writers' block didn't exist in her vocabulary. I remember at times getting up at 3 a.m. in order to think of something to write on the most obscure subjects. One of the exercises she gave us was to write the first chapter of a murder mystery. I wrote the first chapter, then the second. At that point I thought to myself, Why shouldn't I try to write a full-length novel and make it humorous? -- even though humor and Middle East is an oxymoron. Then followed years of writing, rewriting and rewriting ad infinitum. The rest is history. I give you THE MURDERER SAID SHALOM - the first humorous murder mystery ever to come out of the Middle East. You may contact author Leonard Stein by e-mail at istein@zahav.net.il