‘Buffalo Bill’s Dead Now’ By Margaret Coel

 Published by Berkley Prime Crime,
September, 2012.
ISBN: 978-0-425-25271-0

This novel, the newest in the widely acclaimed Wind River Mystery series, is a little different from its predecessors.  While still featuring Vicki and Father John, the thrust of the book is well in the past: the late 19th century, to be exact, when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show toured Europe featuring various Indian groups, including Arapahos like Chief Black Heart.

It appears that the regalia worn by the Chief went missing when the tour came to an end, only to be discovered when the building in which it was hidden was being demolished.  The items were purchased by a local rancher and donated to the museum at the St. Francis mission.

However, en route from Germany the shipment is hijacked, and Vicki and Father John, as usual, have to come to the rescue.  The mystery includes the murder of the donor, who might have known more about the stolen goods.  Complicating the investigation is a feud between two Arapaho families with lineage back to the principal players way back when.

Intertwined in the tale are descriptions of what it is like living on a reservation, now and in the distant past, and the effect on the lives of Native Americans.  The plot is well-presented, with the requisite suspense to keep the reader wondering what comes next.  The real question, always present, is the relationship between Vicki and Father John and what, if anything, will ever develop. Recommended.

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Reviewer:  Ted Feit

Margaret Coel is a native Coloradan who hails from a pioneer Colorado family. The West — the mountains, plains, and vast spaces — are in her bones, she says. She moved out of Colorado on two occasions — to attend Marquette University and to spend a couple of years in Alaska. Both times she couldn't wait to get back. She is the of the author of the acclaimed Wind River mystery series set among the Arapahos on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation and featuring Jesuit priest Father John O'Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden.

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.

‘Distant Shadows’ by Jane-Marie Barker

Published by Austin & Macauley,  2012.
ISBN: 978-1-84963-176-1

In 1935 two men commit an armed robbery in the course of which one of the robbers kills the night watchman. Neither man is ever caught, each successfully masking his identity for many years. But murder will out . . .  eventually.

The murder is recounted in the prologue to this novel, the remainder of the story being told in two parallel narratives, 1957 and present-day. In the present day, Zoe Peterson is surprised and puzzled when she is at her grandparents house and two policemen call, Detective Inspector Bygrave and the dynamic and handsome Detective Constable James Clark to whom Zoe is instantly attracted, a feeling which he clearly reciprocates. It appears that the perpetrator of the 1935 murder is still alive and has written to confess his crime, but he still hiding behind an alias, and the police think that Zoe’s grandparents may be able to help them even though neither was alive at the time of the robbery. In the 1957 narrative a young woman named Cathy Redwell is starting a new job but is aghast to find that her boss is Stephen Adams - 5 years previously they had fallen profoundly in love only for Cathy to discover that she is Stephen’s illegitimate half-sister. Now their passionate attraction to each other still endures but Cathy cannot bear either to tell Stephen the truth or to pretend that their love can ever be fulfilled.

The author avoids any confusion between the two narratives by putting one in the first-person present tense and the other in the third-person singular past tense. At the same time a number of important issues are raised in both narratives.

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Reviewer: Radmila May

Also by the author: Beneath the Daisies.

 

Jayne-Marie Baker writes mystery thrillers with a romatic twist, and has an unlimited capacity to adore cold cases and double time lines. She enjoys murder mysteries minus the blood and guts, loves all things literary, cats, elephants and butterflies. As a creative person, she enjoys reading as much as writing it, dancing, spending time with her family and friends, and looks forward to the future with ambition and hope.

 www.jaynemariebarker.com

‘The Silence’ by Sarah Rayne

Published by Severn House, 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8248-6

Although Stilter House is set in a remote part of Derbyshire, it is the house where antiques dealer Nell West’s dead husband spent much of his childhood, so she is more than happy to visit (with her young daughter Beth) to value the contents.

The house stands on the ground which a much older property  -  in which Isobel Acton committed murder; - once stood, but Nell is unaware that the house is said to be  haunted.

When Michael Flint, Nell’s lover, receives a letter telling him that Nell and Beth shouldn't go to Stilter House ‘because ‘Esmond is still there’ Michael is alarmed. Unable to contact Nell, or the writer of the letter, to obtain more information, Michael decides to leave Oxford and follow Nell to Derbyshire to warn her.

But already Nell has experienced some very odd incidents and is worried about Beth, who has made a friend, a young boy who plays the piano.

Eerie, scary, macabre, this is Sarah Rayne at her best. Slowly the events of the past unravel, and in horrifying detail we learn the secrets of Stilter House.  This is the third in this haunting series and is as unputdownable as the earlier two.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes
Earlier books in the series are: Property of a Lady, The Sin Eater.

Sarah Rayne began writing in her teens, and after a Convent education, which included writing plays for the Lower Third to perform, embarked on a variety of jobs. Her first novel was published in 1982, and since then she has written more than 20 books, including eight psychological thrillers, which have met with considerable acclaim, including the nomination to the long-list for the prestigious Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year 2005 for Tower of Silence, (originally published in 2003). In 2011, she embarked on a series of books with a ghost-theme, featuring the antique dealer, Nell West, and the Oxford don, Michael Flint, who first make their appearance in Property of a Lady.
                       http://www.sarahrayne.co.uk

‘Something You Are’ by Hanna Jameson

 Published by Head of Zeus,
6 December, 2012.
ISBN: 978-1-908800213

Every book should be judged on its merits, without taking into account the publisher’s marketing hype. But once in a while, there’s a piece of information in that promotional ballyhoo which becomes impossible to ignore. So it is with Hanna Jameson and her debut novel. She was just seventeen years old when she wrote it: an achievement worth trumpeting by any standards, and one which intruded over and over again as I read the book. Not because there’s any evidence of inexperience or naivety: rather the opposite. Jameson is clearly a born writer, with all the necessary skills firmly in place.

Emma Dyer has been brutally murdered, and her father wants revenge; he employs ruthless hit-man Nic Caruana to hunt down the killer. Nic becomes more closely involved with Emma’s family and friends than is comfortable, and narrowly averts serious trouble as he pursues his mission.

Jameson creates a scenario, a character set, a plot with the surest of hands. The prose is crisper, more fluent and better constructed than I’ve found in many a novel by people two or three times her age; and she creates an all too believable world in powerful and horrifying detail. That unsavoury world was what gave me a problem. They call it noir, but it’s much blacker than that. In this world graphic violence is routinely the solution to a dispute, and occurs so often that the characters take it in their stride and cleaning up the consequences is no more of chore than vacuuming the carpet. It’s a world where every other sentence spoken contains the f-word and worse; where hard drugs and firearms are everyday currency, and self-harm and casual sex are a way of life. And there isn’t a single character to like.

Jameson’s account of it makes the reader see, smell and taste it in all its seedy, often sickening detail, in much the way Simon Kernick and Andrew Grant have before her. I was all too ready to believe that people like Dyer, Caruana and bent cop Brinks exist, and that this down-and-dirty underworld is based on a reality most of us prefer to sidestep. But I could hardly bear to think that a girl of seventeen would know about such things, or have the imagination to create them on the page. The problem, which shouldn’t be a problem at all, is that she does it so well. It’s compelling and riveting; it grabs the reader and holds the attention.

It’s not for the faint-hearted or weak-stomached. But on this showing, Hanna Jameson will go far. 

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Hanna Jameson is 22 and lives in Brighton, where she studies American History & Literature at University of Sussex. She is quite uncomfortable with referring to herself in the third person. She loves whiskey, Nick Cave, ballet, Breaking Bad, airports... She has good hair. She also swears frequently, so sorry about that.

‘The Dance of the Seagull’ by Andrea Camilleri

Published by Mantle, 14 March 2013.
ISBN: 978-1-4472-2871-4 (Hardback)
28 February 2013. ISBN: 978-1-4472-2992-6 (Royal Trade Paperback)

The Camilleri stories featuring Inspector Montalbano of the Sicilian police will be familiar to BBC 4 viewers. This is the latest addition to the series.

It begins with Montelbano, awake at dawn, witnessing the strange dance of a seagull on the beach outside his house before it dies. Montalbano is puzzled by this but he is about to collect his girlfriend Livia prior to a short holiday on the island. But just before they set off Montalbano realises that his colleague Fazio is missing. It appears that he was investigating a possible smuggling ring at the port; when Montalbano and his second-in-command Augello go to the port they find evidence that Fazio has abducted at gun-point. Then a witness tells Montalbano that he saw Fazio being beaten up in a remote rocky location; worse, the area is pitted with dry wells used by the Mafia for disposing of corpses. When Montalbano and his colleagues search the wells they find two bodies - but neither is Fazio. Is he alive or dead? And will Montalbano ever have his holiday with the long-suffering Livia?

This is a highly exciting and enjoyable story which convincingly depicts life in Sicily with all its maddening inefficiencies, its corruption and the ever-present sinister and shadowy Mafia. Yet at the same time there is warmth and humanity: the banter between Montalbano and his colleagues, even the bumbling but lovable Catarella, is sharp but affectionate. And the way of life, with good food and the ambience of the ancient and beautiful island, is well and attractively presented.

All in all, an excellent addition to the Montalbano canon and well worth reading.

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Reviewer: Radmila May

Other novels by Andrea Camilleri include The Shape of Water, The Age of Doubt, August Heat and The Scent of the Night.

Andrea Camilleri is the author of many books, including his Montalbano series, which has been adapted for Italian television and translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, and finally, English. He was born at Porto Empedocle, near Agrigento. His style is very particular as he mixes Italian and local dialect without however making it unreadable for those who are not from that part of Italy. Camilleri has won numerous homestigious literary awards in Italy as well as in France. He is married with three children and four grandchildren, and lives in Rome.

Mike Ripley

Mike Ripley is the author of the award-winning ‘Angel’ series of comedy thrillers.  He has won the Crime Writers Association 'Last Laugh Award' twice, first in 1989 with Angel Touch and then again in 1991 for Angels in Arms. Mike was also a scriptwriter for the BBC comedy-drama series Lovejoy (1986–94), which starred Ian McShane as a lovable rogue antique dealer.

For ten years Mike served as crime fiction critic for the Daily Telegraph and on the Birmingham Post for a further eight, reviewing in all over 950 crime novels..

In 2003 he suffered a stroke, and wrote an account of his recovery, Surviving a Stroke, which was published in 2006.

Currently he writes the "Getting Away With Murder" column for the online publication Shots. He is also the series editor at Ostara Publishing, which specialises in reprinting classic mysteries and thrillers.

Today I have the opportunity of putting to him some questions.

Q Mike, you have written fifteen novels featuring Fitzroy Maclean Angel. Can you tell us about the origins of Angel?  Is he based on an amalgam of people, or pure imagination?

A All fiction writers tend to be something of a Frankenstein, creating their characters out of bits of real people. Roy Angel was inspired by one particular friend from university days, but with certain traits removed and others added from other people. There may even be a little bit of me in there, though I’m not admitting to it.

Q After eleven books in the ‘Angel’ series, in 2002 you published Double Take , a stand-alone about how to get away with robbing Heathrow Airport – a kind of Italian Job for the 21st century. What prompted this? An experience at Heathrow?
A Double Take started life as a film script which was entered for a competition and was my attempt to try and bring the Ealing Comedies of the 1950s up to date. It didn’t win anything and never got optioned so I did a ‘novelisation’ which the Do Not Press published alongside the script. The script took me three days to write. Perhaps I should have taken longer…

Q After 20 years working in London you moved to East Anglia and became an archaeologist. I notice that in Angel Underground (2002) Angel infiltrates a dig in Suffolk, so is this something that you have always wanted to do?
A I’ve actually lived in East Anglia (never in London) for over 40 years and becoming a Field Archaeologist at the age of 46 was, I suppose, my mid-life crisis. I read history at university and have been a crime writer and reviewer of crime fiction, so I suppose you could say I’ve always been paid to speak ill of the dead! It was rather cool being the only crime writer who really did find bodies on a regular basis; though they were usually 1,500 years old.  My experiences on dig sites led to both Angel Underground and then my first historical novel: Boudica and the Lost Roman.

Q You wrote two further non-series books in 2005 and 2007, set in AD 60 and AD 1066 respectively.  Does this mean no more ‘Angel’ books or are you just having a break from Angel?
A I followed Boudica  (Roman Britain) with The Legend of Hereward  (East Anglia at the time of the Norman Conquest) because I saw them as two parts of a trilogy looking at ‘Great British Losers’. Both were heroic figures but neither won their particular corner. The third in the series was always planned to be ‘King’ Arthur who probably existed as 5^th century Christian warlord fighting a series of civil wars, but eventually losing out to the pagan ‘Anglo-Saxons’. As I started to do the research, I moved the story back to incorporate the arrival of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Friesians so that you had the invading ‘English’ fighting with the Romano-Britons as to who would rule Britannia in the power vacuum left by the retreat of the Roman Empire. The result was a bloodthirsty saga spanning the years 450 – 520 AD called First Kings which, hopefully, will find a publisher this year. The ‘Angel’ series came to a full stop (or at least a semi-colon) with Angels Unaware, the fifteenth in the series, which was published in 2008, twenty years to the day after the first one appeared. I think I tied up all the loose ends, but I didn’t kill him off, so Fitzroy Maclean Angel may yet appear again: older but probably not much wiser.

Q  In 2003 you suffered a stroke and out of this experience came Surviving a Stroke, an account of your recovery. I understand this helped you regained the use of your left hand, as you used a mechanical typewriter. Which came first, the desire to tell the story of your experience or the physical need to become active? Was one a by-product of the other?
A Initially, my brilliant idea to use a manual typewriter to get my left hand and arm working again was so that I could go back on the computer and finish the book (Boudica) I had been working on when I had my stroke. Once that was done, I set about recounting my stroke experience really with a view to helping the partners, carers and families of stroke survivors, which I have done as a volunteer with the charities the Stroke Association and the Blood Pressure Association.

Q Currently you write a regular column ‘Getting Away With Murder’ for Shots, an  online publication I greatly enjoy, may I say.  You write for The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times and the Birmingham Post among others. Additionally you lecture on crime-writing at the University of Cambridge, so I hesitate to ask do you have a regular working day? 
A  Not any more. Of course, for over 20 years I was a commuter to a day-job in an office in London and in fact wrote the first Angel book on the train. For many years I would write only on Sundays, though naturally I’d be thinking up plotlines and noting down bits of dialogue (and jokes) constantly. These days, the working day is governed by what comes in by email or by mail – I get sent around 300 crime novels a year to review and edit and publish between 12 and 16 titles – but I try and do some ‘personal’ writing every day, even if it’s only something scurrilous for my Getting Away With Murder column, to which I contribute about 60,000 words a year.

Q Is it true that comedy doesn’t translate?’

A Probably; and of course comedy dates. I have been very disappointed never to have been seriously published in America because American editors didn’t seem to ‘get it’ – even though all the American readers I’ve met did. On the other hand I have been translated into German, Spanish, Thai and, most successfully, Japanese though never into any Scandinavian language, which confirms my suspicions about Nordic crime writing…

Q Do you still do scriptwriting?

A   Given half a chance I would, but television production is so fragmented these days, I think you have to work very hard to maintain a network of contacts and then just hope you are in the right place at the right time. It’s a young man’s (or woman’s) game – and so it should be.

Q I am very interested in the reprinting of some of the wonderful books now out of print . Pleased to hear that you are the series editor at Ostara Publishing, which specialises in reprinting classic mysteries and thrillers.  How did that come about?
A I was very excited when I was asked by Ostara to create their Top Notch Thrillers imprint in 2009. The idea was to rescue some of the unjustly forgotten Great British thrillers of the Sixties and Seventies; thrillers I grew up with but which have been out of print for far too long. We’ve republished 28 titles so far, with four more coming in 2013 and I am really proud of the fact that we have got authors such as Geoffrey Household, Francis Clifford, Alan Williams and Berkely Mather back in print and in front of a new readership. Last year the owner of Ostara, Andrew Cocks (a near neighbour whom I first met 35 years ago when we both worked at Essex University) asked me if I could establish another imprint, Ostara Crime, which revived more recent British crime fiction from the 1980s and 90s.  Whereas the majority of Top Notch Thriller authors have all been male, our first four Ostara Crime authors are all female.   In our first six months, we’ve reissued three titles each from Christine Green, Denise Danks and Janet Neel (Baroness Cohen) with three from, Lesley Grant-Adamson coming out in the next couple of months. The Ostara philosophy is simple: we don’t do complete backlists, we select authors and specific titles which show all the different styles of crime fiction and we produce (we think) a high quality trade paperback as well as an eBook version. 

Q Equally, I am passionate about new writers. There is some marvellous talent emerging today. You are co-editor of the three Fresh Blood anthologies promoting new British crime writing. Can you tell us something about that? 

A   I used to be very passionate about new writers and felt so strongly that the John Creasey Award for new writers was being down-graded (in the 1990s) that I resigned from the Crime Writers Association. The first Fresh Blood anthology was a response to the fact that the Creasey Award was not made for two years because, presumably, there were no interesting new writers around. We found people like Christopher Brookmyre, Charlie Higson, Stella Duffy, Ken Bruen oh, and somebody called Lee Child – I wonder whatever happened to him?

Q  Are you working on a new book, and if so is it a stand-alone or an Angel?

A  I’ve got two completed novels being considered by publishers at the moment, though neither are ‘Angels’. I am currently working on a non-fiction social history of the Golden Age of British Thrillers from 1953-1987.

Thanks, Mike, for a most interesting chat.

Angel Series

Just Another Angel (1988)                             Angel Touch (1989)

    Angel Hunt (1990)                                          Angels in Arms (1991)

          Angel City (1994)                                           Angel Confidential (1995)

     Family Of Angels (1996)                                That Angel Look (1997)

Bootlegged Angel (1999) Lights, Camera, Angel (2001)

Angel Underground (2002) Angel on the Inside (2003)

Angel In The House (2005) Angel's Share (2006)

Angels Unaware (2008)

Non-series Novels

Double Take (2002) Boudica and the Lost Roman (2005)

The Legend of Hereward the Wake (2007)

Non Fiction

      Surviving a Stroke (2006)

www.shotsmag.co.uk

‘The Intercept’ by Dick Wolf

Published by Little Brown,
January 1^st 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-7515-5114-3

Yes, it’s by Dick Wolf, yes, it’s the name you see on your TV screens after you have sat for an hour enthralled by an hour of Law and Order, and yes, this is better than good!

When five passengers and a stewardess foil the hijacking of a commercial plane on route to New York, ‘The Six’ become instant celebrities, hailed as heroes for their bravery.  But NYPD investigator Jeremy Fisk suspects that there is more to come.

The story trails Bassam Shah as he drives from Denver to New York, a small cog in potentially devastating wheel of misfortune. We also follow the lives of  the ‘Six’ initially thrilled to be hailed as heroes, they don’t enjoy having their liberty restricted. They have great TV interviews, and plenty of media attention, but the downside of being famous, is that they don’t seem to be able to go home!

Jeremy Fisk knows that the enemy is out there, and he is getting closer, but from which direction is he coming and where will he strike.

As we learn about the lives of these ordinary people thrust into the limelight, by their brave actions, we also learn about the lives of those who work tirelessly behind the series to keep everyone safe, and the misplaced dedication fired by religious zeal of those bent on destruction.

A quite brilliant piece of writing, as the suspense rises to an unbelievable level.  I was totally absorbed, and although I suspected that there would be twists and turns, I was unprepared for the direction from whence the final twist came. Don’t miss this great book!

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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes

Dick Wolf  Richard Anthony "Dick" Wolf (born December 20, 1946) is an American producer, specializing in crime dramas such as Miami Vice and the Law & Order franchise. Wolf attended the University of Pennsylvania. After graduation, he launched a successful career in advertising; he wrote and produced over 100 TV commercials and penned the slogans "You can't beat Crest for fighting cavities" and "I'm Cheryl, Fly Me" for National Airlines.

Throughout his career he has won several awards including an Emmy Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

He started his television career in 1985, when he joined NBC's Hill Street Blues team as an executive script consultant and stayed through the show's final season, earning Emmy and Writer's Guild nominations. In 1988, Wolf formed his own television production company, Wolf Films, which produces Law & Order and its many spinoffs. Wolf has also produced films such as School Ties, No Man’s Land and Twin Towers

‘Light Shining on the Forest’ by Paul Torday

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
3 January 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-297-867470

No-one knows exactly how many children in the United Kingdom go missing but experts have said that a child goes missing every 5 minutes. Nearly all of these return home or are otherwise accounted for. But not all.

In this novel three children go missing from much the same area. The first is 10-year-old Leo Constantine from a village near Kielder Forest in north-east England, once an area of desolate moorland, now  a huge patchwork of conifer plantations, where Leo’s father Georgie Nixon is a forestry worker. Several months later two young girls disappear: Becky Thomas, 9, neglected, alcoholic mother, father dead in Iraq; Karin Gilbey, also 9, much loved daughter of prosperous middle-class parents.

When Leo disappears, such efforts as the authorities are inclined to make are ineffective so his mother Mary seeks the help of Norman Stokoe, recently-appointed Children’s Czar for the North-East. He, if anyone, should be able to assist. But Norman, mentally and emotionally inert, does not want to get involved. At the same time Willie Craig is pursuing the story of Becky Thomas: as a reporter on a local paper he is fed up with covering shop openings and planning committee meetings and desperately wants a big story to enable him to break into the big time. Are the two disappearances linked? And if Willie could do a hatchet job on Norman and his apparent lack of interest so much the better.

Norman, however, has been intrigued by photographs showing marks on Leo’s forehead, hands and feet. They stir memories from his Catholic schooldays. And when another little girl disappears Norman stirs himself to search on the internet for child-abductors: all the known ones are accounted for apart from one. Information about that one should also be available but is not. Is there an Establishment/Government cover-up? At this stage Pippa, Norman’s PA, is drawn into the action; unlike Norman and Willie her main concern is for the children themselves and her moral passion drives all three, along with Leo’s stepfather, to the final extraordinary outcome in Kielder Forest.

I thought this book was remarkable and so well-written it was a pleasure to read. I am normally allergic to any mention of the paranormal in crime fiction; vampires, ghosts and zombies have no place in the genre. But the other-worldly aspects of this book are so well-handled that they do not jar, nor, for non-believers, is an excessive leap of faith required; a considerable degree ambivalence is maintained throughout.

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Reviewer: Radmila May

Other books by Paul Torday: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, The Girl on the Landing, The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers, More than You Can Say, Breakfast at the Deja Vu (ebook), The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall, Theo (ebook).

 

Paul Torday was born in 1946 and read English Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford. He spent the next 30 years working in engineering and in industry, after which he scaled back his business responsibilities to fulfil a long-harboured ambition - to write. He burst on to the literary scene in 2006 with his first novel, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, an immediate bestseller that has been sold in 19 countries. He is married with two sons by a previous marriage and has two stepsons and lives close to the River North Tyne.

‘No Bells’, by F M Meredith

Published by Oak Tree Press, 2012. ISBN: 978-1-61009-086-5

Gordon Butler of the Rocky Bluff Police Department has found love with Benay Weiss.  So when Benay telephones him hysterical with the news that her best friend Geri Rowe has disappeared Gordon swings into action.

But nothing is as it seems, and when a body is found, soon Gordon is struggling with the evidence pointing to his beloved Benay as the prime suspect.

Cleverly plotted, as the story twists and turns I kept having to revise my own assessment as to whodunit.  For Gordon, as he learns that there are things about Benay he didn’t know, he tries desperately to hang on to his belief in her innocence.

With some great characters and a tightly woven story that keeps you guessing to the end, this is not to be missed.

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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes

Marilyn Meredith, aka F. M. Meredith, is the author of over 30 published books. Writing has been a part of her life since she was 10 years old. She married the cute sailor she met on a blind date and they raised five children and now have 18 grandchildren and 12 great-grands. Doing things with family is one of her favorite pasttimes.  She's had many jobs through the years: telephone operator, day care and nursery school teacher, teacher in a pre-school for developmentally disabled children, owner-operator of a licensed care home for developmentally disabled adults, and administrator and teacher for CEU classes for Administrators of licensed facilities. She's also taught many writing classes, been an instructor at writers' conferences, appeared at mystery conventions, libraries and service and social groups. She's the Program Chair for the Public Safety Writers Association's annual conference, the editor of the PSWA newsletter and also the newsletter editor for the California Residential Services Association.
She's a member of three chapters of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of American, PSWA and Epicauthors. Reading mysteries, going to movies and playing wild games with my great and grandkids are what she likes to do for fun.