An Olympic athlete finds her life in danger when she starts a feud with a ruthless gym ownerHomicide detectives don’t chase streakers. So it shouldn’t be Jill Smith’s problem when Berkeley’s new public nudity ban stirs the spirit of the city’s exhibitionists, unleashing a horde of indignant flashers on the city streets. But department infighting has resulted in Jill being stripped of her gold detective badge and put back in uniform to pursue the naked radicals. She’s pursuing one of these au naturel miscreants though a patch of poison oak when she’s stopped by Bryn Wiley, Olympic diver, gym owner, and local hero. Bryn is in a feud with a rival fitness club, whose owner she suspects of shooting bullets through her car windows. Jill can’t help her—she has nudists to apprehend!—and so Bryn resolves to take matters into her own hands, holding a press conference where she calls her rival out. It’s a bold move, and may also be a foolish one. Her assailant’s next target will be something far more valuable than a car.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

Jill investigates the death of a chef who was mysteriously poisoned by his own soupUntil the helicopter crash, Jill Smith never knew fear. A homicide detective in the leftist enclave of Berkeley, California, she has faced down her share of thugs, thieves, and killers, but since surviving the downed helicopter, her nerves have been shot. Unwilling to submit to her anxiety, she goes back to work. The chef and owner of Paradise, an upscale restaurant in Berkeley’s so-called “Gourmet Ghetto,” is found on the floor of his own kitchen, poisoned by the soup he was seasoning. On his way to the top of the foodie pyramid, the chef made enemies of his dishwasher, his neighbors, and Earth Man, a hippie holdout who lives on kitchen scraps. To pinpoint the killer, Jill will have to remember what it means to be fearless.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

When two immigrant boys die of a brutal and mysterious illness, Kiernan must fight to prevent an outbreakDeaf and incapable of speech, the two children from Panama are unable to voice their suffering, but Grady can tell they are dying. When he met them in the jungle they were miracle workers, soundlessly leading him and his team to the richest geological find of the century, and he brought them back to Las Vegas to safeguard his investment. Unwilling to hospitalize the children and risk deportation, he gets them out of town to die their tortured deaths.Whatever killed them is mysterious, uncontrollable, and ready to sweep across the region. The only person who can stop the impending epidemic is Kiernan O'Shaughnessy, medical examiner turned private detective, who once led a losing fight against a similar disease in Africa. She goes to Nevada to fight the outbreak, but finds herself battling greedy geologists and her well-meaning but hapless former houseman instead. If she...

When a young gymnast dies performing a world-famous stunt, Kiernan suspects foul playAs a young girl in Baltimore, Kiernan O'Shaughnessy lived for gymnastics, where strict discipline and endless practice kept her centered even as her life fell apart. Her idol was stuntman Greg Gaige. Famous for pulling off the moves no one else could, and for scorning safety equipment, Gaige was the one man O'Shaughnessy truly admired.Ten years after Gaige's tragic death, O'Shaughnessy is a private detective on the California coast, and a young female gymnast has come along to challenge Gaige's crown. O'Shaughnessy goes to watch the girl attempt the death-defying Gaige Move, without a harness, on the edge of a seaside cliff. After a perfect landing, the ground gives way and the gymnast falls to her death. The police call it an accident, but O'Shaughnessy is determined to get the truth—in honor of her old hero, and for the young woman who looked up to him the way she did.

When a rash of pranks on the city’s meter maids turns deadly, Jill Smith isn’t amused Two witnesses see the man drag the old woman into a canyon while brandishing a rifle. As night falls, detective Jill Smith and the Berkeley police department set up a perimeter. The canyon is a hostage negotiator’s nightmare—dark, rough, and full of escape routes—and when she finally opens communication, the gunman doesn’t respond. Rather than wait for dawn, Jill leads her team into the darkness. At the bottom of the canyon they find a battered old mannequin and a box of stolen parking tickets. The entire incident was another skirmish in one man’s ongoing war to humiliate the city’s meter maids. Interviewing the residents on the canyon’s lip, Jill meets Madeleine Riordan, retired attorney and legendary firebrand She seems to know something, but refuses to tell until the next day. When Jill returns, the woman has been murdered, and Jill suspects that the prankster may have lost his sense of humor.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

An activist’s murder forces Jill to infiltrate Berkeley’s psychedelic underworldA town as diverse as Berkeley, California, is never without controversy. This year the uproar is over the Rainbow Village, a hippie-occupied bayside lot that has degenerated into a drug-infested cesspool. As the city tries to eject the squatters, two Grateful Dead fans are murdered and a developer is assaulted. But for homicide detective Jill Smith, the conflict at the Village is only a nuisance until the violence gets personal. While staking out a coffee shop, Jill sees Liz Goldenstern, a handicapped activist who has long been a thorn in the side of local business. Her wheelchair has broken down, and Jill offers to push her home. The next morning, Liz is found savagely murdered at the Village. To find her killer, Jill will have to remember that sometimes hippies are far from pacifists.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

Three years after a hit-and-run, Kiernan searches the sea for the missing suspectAs Robin Matucci sails under the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific, the sea is calm and her deckhand, Carlos, is sober. By the next day, the sky is black and Carlos is passed out drunk. The waves crest higher as Robin fights to reach land, until they finally overwhelm her small ship. Fire springs up from the engine room, and the tiny craft goes to the bottom of the Pacific.When the wreck's remains surface, Robin is gone, but the police recover samples of her hair. They then discover that the samples match those found at the site of a hit-and-run accident from three years before. The hit-and-run victim's widow wants Robin found, dead or alive, and hires medical examiner turned private detective Kiernan O'Shaughnessy to find her. The answer to the riddle of the missing mariner will take Kiernan to the depths of the ocean, and back into the arms of a man she thought she had left behind forever.

Newly promoted detective Jill Smith confronts a traffic circle homicideAfter six months of perfect weather, the people of Berkeley, California, have forgotten how to drive during a thunderstorm. Newly christened homicide detective Jill Smith is on her way home to a chocolate ice cream dinner when she gets caught in a traffic jam at the city’s only roundabout. At the front of the line, she sees the trouble: a flipped-over Cadillac and one dead driver. The man behind the wheel was one of the city’s leading citizens, a philanthropist in a town that puts charity first. He was coming down Berkeley’s steepest hill when his brakes failed, flipping his car and ending his charity work forever. Two things trouble Jill. First, the car’s brakes had been inspected that afternoon. Second, the driver was nearly blind, and unfit to ever take the wheel. Finding the killer will lead her from Berkeley’s upper echelon all the way into the depths of the community’s underbelly.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

A favor for her ex-husband leads Jill Smith to a blood-soaked crime sceneSomeone is stealing hubcaps from the Berkeley police department. An afternoon spent chasing the petty thief leaves beat cop Jill Smith exhausted, flustered, and in no mood to talk when her ex-husband Nat calls asking for a favor. A colleague of his at the county welfare department, Anne Spaulding, is missing. Jill doesn’t care about her husband’s new crush, but a note of fear in his voice compels her to investigate. She drives to Anne’s house, where she finds the back door open, the living room trashed, and the walls caked in dried blood. Searching the apartment yields few clues. The woman liked make-up, exercise, and credit cards. The only item that points to a possible suspect is a pewter pen, which Jill recognizes as one of Nat’s. She has no love for her ex-husband, but is she ready to arrest him for murder?This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

To escape arrest for her best friend's murder, Vejay must find the real killer-before it's too late In the small woodsy town of Henderson, California, the electric company is strict about sick days. So when meter-reader Vejay Haskell decides to play hooky, her first concern is staying out of sight. She skirts around the edge of town, making her way to Frank's Place, a cozy saloon owned by her friend Frank Goulet. After two cups of hot buttered rum, they have an argument and she storms out into the pouring rain. She goes home, takes a nap, and awakens sober, embarrassed, and ready to apologize. But by the time she gets back to Frank's bar, he is dead. Vejay was seen leaving Frank's house in a huff, and her lack of an alibi combined with her suspicious sick day makes her the number-one suspect. As the police close in on her, Vejay turns detective in search of Frank's real killer. It's a perilous task, but she has one advantage when she puts on her work clothes: Nobody ever notices the meter-reader. " Haskell is] intelligent, unpretentious, efficient and very, very likeable." -San Francisco Chronicle "Susan Dunlap is the leading proponent of gutsy, nontraditional women who nimbly tread in he-man territory." -The Washington Times "As long as writers like Dunlap continue to play with the form, genre fans need not lament the mystery's demise." -San Francisco Chronicle Susan Dunlap is a prolific author of mystery novels. Born in New York City, Dunlap majored in English at Bucknell University and earned a masters degree in education from the University of North Carolina. She was a social worker before an Agatha Christie novel inspired her to try her hand at writing mysteries. Six attempts and six years later, she published Karma (1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith. Since then, Dunlap has published more than twenty novels and numerous short stories. Her other ongoing characters include the meter-reading detective Vejay Haskell, former forensic pathologist Kiernan O'Shaughnessy, and Zen student/stunt double Darcy Lott. In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga, worked as a paralegal, and helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization created to support women in the field of mystery writing. She lives near San Francisco.

When a PI vanishes and leaves a body in his office, it’s up to Jill Smith to pick up the piecesJill knows something’s wrong with Herman Ott as soon as she sees him on the patio at the Claremont Hotel. A perpetually broke ex-hippie private investigator, Ott is known around town for owning a wardrobe of nothing but yellow second-hand clothes. Yet today he wears all black, and after asking Jill to meet him at Berkeley’s most elegant hotel, he clams up and refuses to explain why he needsto see her. Apologizing, he asks her to call him an hour later. Jill obliges, but Ott never answers his phone. And the next day, inside Ott’s office, she finds a body. Jill doesn’t know what kind of trouble Ott is in, but if she doesn’t find him soon, his notorious yellow suit may be marred with a dash of blood red.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

Vejay investigates the poisoning death of one of the town’s most powerful citizens during its oddest annual eventThough it sounds violent, Henderson’s annual slugfest is less vicious than it is slimy. The regional festival honors the normally detested California banana slug with competitions to prove which slug is the biggest, fastest, or—in the event that gives the festival its notoriety—the tastiest. Rather than eat crow, the area’s local politicians atone for their sins by eating slug hot dogs, slug chili, and slug pie. This year, one dish will prove murderously foul. Edwina Henderson is the last of her family to live in the town that bears their name. A committed environmentalist, she is also the woman responsible for this year’s slugfest, and will take her place at the judge’s table. When a slug-pizza knocks her flat, the crowd assumes it was just an especially gross slice. But when she doesn’t get up, meter-reader Vejay Haskell must confront the devious murder of the town’s leading treehugger.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Dunlap including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

A new smart and sassy mystery featuring intrepid stunt double and Zen student Darcy LottWhen her Zen teacher is attacked in front of her by a silent, hoodie-clad assailant, Darcy Lott feels uncharacteristically helpless. If she cannot identify Garson-roshi's attacker, she cannot protect him. For whoever it is will surely strike again.But who would have a reason to assault this wise and gentle man? As she questions her fellow students and other acquaintances of the Zen master, it becomes clear that Garson-roshi has been keeping secrets from Darcy. What happened while he was living in Japan? And where does he disappear to on the last Wednesday of every month?Distracted by the possibility of her big career break on a new action movie, Darcy finds herself unprepared when the case takes a shocking twist ...