Mary Willis Walker

Under the Beetle's Cellar

Mary Willis Walker

• 1996 Anthony-Novel winner
• 1996 Macavity-Novel winner
• 1995 Hammett winner
• Score: 30.46

Kidnapped by a cult of religious fanatics, an Austin school bus driver and eleven of his young charges have been held underground at the group’s highly fortified compound for forty-six days. While a team of federal negotiators begins to lose all hope of rescuing the hostages, crime reporter Molly Cates sets outto discover everything she can about the cult’s iron-willed leader, Samuel Mordecai. And as the clock ticks inexorably, she takes the role of Clarisse Starling opposite Mordecai’s Hannibal Lecter, engaging in a psychological confrontation as harrowing as…

Zero at the Bone

Mary Willis Walker

• 1992 Macavity-1st Novel winner
• 1991 Agatha–1st Novel winner
• 1992 Edgar-1st Novel nominee
• Score: 26.42

Katherine Driscoll is just three weeks away from disaster: foreclosure on her home and business, even the sale of her beloved dog. She has no hope of raising the $91,000 she so desperately needs—until the father she hasn’t seen for thirty years writes to her, offering her enough money to solve her problems…if she will do one thing in return.

But Katherine may never learn what that is. When she arrives in Austin, she is hours too late: her father has died in a bizarre accident. As she sifts through the cryptic notes he left behind, she finds herself caught up…

The Red Scream

Mary Willis Walker

• 1995 Edgar–Novel winner
• Score: 10.45

Texas-based crime reporter Molly Cates has just published her first book, describing the blood-curdling exploits of serial killer Louie Bronk. Now on death row, Louie’s sentence is about to be carried out. Molly will be there as a witness, and she wants to write about it—the final coda to Louie’s story. But suddenly, she’s being strongly discouraged by her boss at the Lone Star Monthly and by Charlie McFarland, the millionaire real estate developer whose first wife, Tiny, was Bronk’s most famous victim—and the only one whose murder is a capital offense.…

All the Dead Lie Down

Mary Willis Walker

• 1999 Barry-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.49

When crime reporter Molly Cates’s father died more than twenty-five years ago, the case was ruled a suicide, and Molly’s efforts to prove otherwise led to nothing but anguish and the breakup of her family. But now new information has come her way and she reopens the investigation—and a rush of old wounds—with a vengeance. Soon the personal becomes dangerously political as Molly’s search for the truth leads her from the stately halls of Texas government to the mean streets of Austin’s down-and-out–and ultimately to a moral dilemma she never could have anticipated.