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Mary Willis Walker (May 24, 1942 – November 4, 2023) was an American crime fiction author.

Life

Walker graduated from Duke University in English and took up high school teaching. She married in 1967 to Lee Walker who became president of Dell Computers, living in New York and Virginia before moving to Austin, Texas. They had two daughters, Amanda and Susannah. The couple divorced when she was 51. She returned to her maiden name of Mary Willis, but continued to published as Mary Willis Walker, which, she wrote in an article for the New York Times Magazine, she considered a pen name. She continued to live in Austin.

Walker died November 4, 2023.

Writing

She began writing in her mid-forties, which she characterized as "pretty late to start". She spent two years writing her first published thriller, Zero at the Bone, which was published in 1991. Her second Texas-based mystery, Red Scream, was Walker's first to feature sleuth Molly Cates. Red Scream won the Best Mystery Edgar Award in 1993. Under the Beetle's Cellar, published in 1995, was Walker's third mystery.

Bibliography

• Zero at the Bone (1991)
• "Molly Cates" series
  • The Red Scream (1994)
  • Under the Beetle's Cellar (1995)
  • All the Dead Lie Down (1998)

Selected awards

• 1991: Agatha Award for best first novel for Zero at the Bone
• 1992: Macavity Award for best first novel for Zero at the Bone
• 1995: Edgar Award for Best Novel for The Red Scream
• 1996: Macavity Award for Under the Beetle's Cellar
• 1996: Anthony Award for Under the Beetle's Cellar
• 1998: Martin Beck Award for Under the Beetle's Cellar

Footnotes

1. Embden, Nico van. "Mary Willis Walker". embden11.home.xs4all.nl. Retrieved April 16, 2018.
2. "Lars Eighner's US Bookstore Presents The Texas Institute of Letters Authors: Mary Willis Walker". larseighner.com. Archived from the original on August 19, 2008. Retrieved April 16, 2018.
3. Willis, Mary (November 1, 1994). "Too important to sign away: Divorce underlines value of maiden name". The StarPhoenix. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Retrieved April 24, 2021.
4. page 253, Great Women Mystery Writers, 2nd Ed. by Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay, 2007, publ. Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-33428-5
5. Barnes, Michael (December 7, 2023). "'Ecstatic, fervent literacy': Award-winning Austin mystery writer Mary Willis dies at 81". Austin American-Statesman. Retrieved December 8, 2023.
6. ^ Doug J. Swanson (November 15, 1995). "Author works from fears". Baca Raton News. Retrieved December 19, 2009.

References

• Marilyn Stasio (October 1, 1995). "Crime". New York Times. Retrieved December 19, 2009.

External links

• How I Gave Up My Alias by Mary Willis, The New York Times, October 16, 1994

• 1942 births
• 2023 deaths
• 20th-century American novelists
• American crime fiction writers
• American women novelists
• Agatha Award winners
• Anthony Award winners
• Duke University Trinity College of Arts and Sciences alumni
• Edgar Award winners
• Macavity Award winners
• Writers from Austin, Texas
• People from Fox Point, Wisconsin
• Novelists from Wisconsin
• American women mystery writers
• 20th-century American women writers
• Novelists from Texas