I had to ask.

After reading the first three books in Daniel Edward Craig's Five-Star Mystery series I was curious whether he as a hotel professional had ever encountered a dead body. Here's what he had to say.

"I've experienced every imaginable situation as a hotelier, except for murder -- fortunately, that part is pure fiction. However briefly, people live in hotels and therefore employees witness every aspect of life, from birth to death and everything in between. There have been a few circumstances in which guests have died while staying at a hotel where I worked, due to anything from suicide to a heart attack, but rarely does a guest die in a room -- he or she is usually taken away by ambulance and dies in hospital.

If a guest dies in a room, depending on the circumstances, the room is given an extra thorough cleaning and put out of order for a few days, and no future guests are the wiser. This reminds me of an incident I heard about years ago at a hotel in Miami Springs, which I referred to in my blog about bed-and-breakfasts. A guest complained at checkout about an unpleasant odor in his room. It turned out to be a dead body."

I always reject rooms that have an off smell. In addition to my already complex room inspection, I also perform a visual inspection under the bed, behind the bed and in any crawl spaces. Fortunately for me the worst "body part" I've come face-to-face with in a hotel room has been ... cue the trumpet ... toenail clippings! ... on the carpet by the head of my bed! It gets worse. In that circumstance, I was sequestered for jury duty, there was no phone in my room and our floor guard already determined I was a princess. I told him, "No, I'm the Hygiene Hunter." I had to sleep with the toenails.