Yvette Erskine spent eleven years in the Tasmania Police Service. She was active in frontline policing, served as a detective in the CIB and as an investigator in a high-profile, two-year covert task force investigating an international abalone smuggling ring. In her spare time she was member of the elite Protective Security Section. She also has a teaching degree and spent six months trying to enthuse teenagers about English and History before admitting that she had failed spectacularly and should have stuck to locking them up instead.