Bill Stricklin is a Phi Beta Kappa scholar who earned his AB with honors Phi Beta Kappa at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1959. He was Cal student body president and selected as the outstanding cadet of the United States Army ROTC program at UC Berkeley; then trained at Fort Lewis, Washington; then Infantry Officer Training School at Fort Benning, Georgia, qualified as an expert using Army .45 caliber pistols, M-1 rifles and anti-tank bazookas. Cloak-and-dagger training at U.S. Army Counterintelligence School, Fort Holabird, Maryland, followed, learning Cold War spy-craft; six years active and reserve military service-then service as Correspondence Assistant to the Vice President of the United States for the final eighteen months of the Eisenhower Administration; followed by earning doctor of laws JD degree at Harvard Law School Class of 1964. For fifteen years he was a licensed general contractor, project manager for a 16-story San Francisco office building, then for an 11-story office building in Seattle, then for two 20-story office buildings in Honolulu. He practiced law in San Francisco at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, also in Seattle, Washington, and then at Rush Moore Craven Kim & Stricklin, Honolulu, before his current twenty-years of service for the U.S.A. Federal Government headquartered in San Francisco. Mary Eliska Girl Detective-The Mystery of the Abandoned Room - Book 77-is entirely fiction.