I've always loved reading mysteries and published my first series in 1992, featuring a transplanted American detective, Amanda Valentine, who became something of a sensation in my home country of New Zealand. Not only was Amanda the first female detective in a series set in New Zealand, book one had the distinction of being jacketed with the worst cover I've ever seen, and book three was banned in Canada.

The series was very lightweight, faithfully following then-popular convention whereby most Naiad Press mysteries were romance in disguise. These days that recipe no longer sells as romance but as intrigue romance. Amanda was fun but I got bored with writing less-than-mysterious mysteries and sent her riding off into the sunset in book three with Debby Daley.

Ten years later I returned to mystery writing with a very different kind of book and detective. My Jude Devine series is set in beautiful southwest Colorado, in the Four Corners location, a location I love to visit. The first book in the series, Grave Silence, deals with a murder that leads my hero to the FLDS, a polygamist Utah cult more recently in the news. A subplot features a young girl trying to escape that community. The fourth Jude Devine story, Ghost Canyon, will be published in 2010.

In the meantime, I'm writing Fatal Mourning, the first in a new series set in Savannah, featuring forensic pathologist, Dr. Portia Darling.