Forgotten Author: Mary Willis Walker

Mary Willis Walker wrote a stand alone that got a lot of attention and then a series featuring Mollie Cates, a true-crime writer and reporter in Texas. After the third book, she stopped writing.
THE RED SCREAM (1994) 1995 Edgar Award for Best Mystery

Crime reporter Molly Cates has chronicled the exploits of Louie Bronk, a brutal serial killer scheduled for execution, for her first book. With his execution just a few days away, Molly decides to write the closing chapter on her disturbing relationship with the man known as the Texas Scalper. Strangely, both her boss and the husband of the woman whose murder got Bronk the death penalty pressure her to back off the story. When she receives a chilling anonymous letter and another body is found, she begins to suspect that Bronk is not the killer at all. Her quest for the truth, she discovers, not only discredits her work, but places her own life on the line.

UNDER THE BEETLE'S CELLAR (1995) 1996 Anthony Award for Best Mystery; recipient of the Hammett Prize and the Macavity Award.

Intrepid, wisecracking crime reporter Molly Cates is back, this time confronting wacko cult leader Samuel Mordecai, whose Austin, Texas, compound is just as bound-for-tragedy as David Koresh's. Mordecai believes the end of the world is imminent, and according to a divine vision he's received, he must sacrifice a group of purified "lambs of God" who'll serve as his ticket into Heaven. To that end, he's kidnapped a school bus driver and 11 children and kept them hostage in a buried bus for 46 days. The hostage negotiators can't make headway, and they're terrified of another disaster of Waco proportions. Enter Molly, who interviewed Mordecai months earlier and is the only person he will trust. The story moves from the gut-wrenching tension inside the hostage bus to the frustrated negotiators to Molly, who's racing against time to psych Mordecai out and rescue the children before their captor begins his final sacrifice.

ALL THE DEAD LIE DOWN (1998)

Molly is simultaneously researching a highly charged bill before the Texas legislature that would permit the granting of licenses to carry concealed weapons and a story about five homeless women that tracks them through a year of their lives. She becomes further distracted by the reappearance of key players related to her father's untimely death 28 years earlier-officially ruled a suicide, although Molly had at the time tried unsuccessfully to prove otherwise.

Stand alone:

ZERO AT THE BONE (1991) 1991 Agatha Award for Best First Novel; Finalist 1992 Edgar Award for Best First Novel

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 in terrible family
secrets--and a deadly illicit trade. The more she learns, the more determined she becomes to prove her father's death was no accident. In doing so, Katherine will make a bitter enemy--one desperate enough to kill...and perhaps, kill again.

Excerpt:

The pointman waited until dusk to take the hunk of rotting meat out of the toilet tank where he had hidden it three days before. Raising the dripping bag, he caught a whiff of spoiled meat through the plastic. Yes, three days in the heat was perfect for aging a beef brisket to just the right putrescence. Lucky this place smelled so bad no one had noticed the stench.

He tied the bag to the left side of his belt to balance the one on his right and padded to the lavatory door. He eased the door open and looked through the gathering darkness over Bird Lake, past the huge brick reptile house toward the Phase II section. Amazing how quiet this place was with visitors locked out and animals confined to their holding cages for the
night. He preferred it like this. Only he, the pointman,was at large, free finally to do what had to be done.

A quiver of pleasure rippled from his scalp to his toes. This first one was going to be so easy. Too easy. After the years of anticipation, the act itself might not be enough.

No matter. Pleasure wasn't the point. Justice was the point. He had been training for this all his life and now, finally, the time was right. Nothing could go wrong. The time was auspicious--he liked that
word--auspicious. It made his mouth water with anticipation for what
was coming, the work of the night and dawn.

He stepped out into the open. The night watchman--that plump, pale, grinning fool--would be sitting at his station sipping coffee from his stainless-steel thermos. No sweat. No threat.

Wearing only black Reeboks, black spandex pants, and a black jersey, he moved soundlessly along the path. His good-luck piece, which had never failed him, even in the most desperate times, swayed on its cord under his shirt, stroking his chest,its scales catching a hair occasionally, like the caress of a woman with jagged fingernails.

As he neared the carnivora complex he sniffed the air, trying to separate Brum's smell from the rest of the animal odors. A full hundred yards away, the sharp acidic scent filled his nostrils. Brum. It was the big male's turn to spend the night outside. He would be ready. Just like the pointman, it was Brum's nature to be ready for the kill.

"Opportunity's about to knock on your door, brother," he whispered, breaking from a walk into an easy lope. Approaching the high wire mesh fence that surrounded the quarter-acre exhibit, he spotted Brum, sprawled on his side, half-concealed behind an artificial boulder on the bank of the recycling stream.

As if he had been waiting, the tiger leapt to his feet and glided toward the fence on huge spongy paws. The last rays of the setting sun transformed each hair of his thick orange coat into a glowing electric wire. As he walked his nose seemed connected to the bag at the pointman's waist by an invisible thread of scent. When he was a few feet from the fence, the tiger stopped and hissed through his yellowed fangs.

The pointman jumped the guardrail to approach closer to the high fence. "Smell good, don't I, Brum-boy? You ready for me? You better be." He pressed his palm against the fence and felt a ripple in his groin when the tiger rubbed his body along the other side of the fence, dragging his coarse fur against the pointman's skin.

Seeing the tiger at twilight like this, against the backdrop of grass and
trees and rocks, it was easy to imagine away the fence and picture Brum as a wild tiger. A solitary hunter in the forest at night. Senses honed by hunger, forced by the void at his center, the tiger would scent the prey and his stomach would shudder at the smell of warm blood pumping beneath thin skin. He would hold a crouch, listening, his small rounded ears twitching. Here the pointman laughed aloud, remembering he had read that Indonesian hunters shaved their nostrils because they were certain tigers could hear a man's breath rustling through his nose hairs. He believed it. Brum would hear every breath, every blink, every tremble. And slowly, silently, eyes riveted on the prey, he would creep into range.

Then would come the best part, the part the pointman had imagined so often, asleep and waking. He saw it now: the cat launching his body into the air, hooking his claws deep into the flesh of the right flank, pulling the shrieking prey to the ground. And then ... the tiger's teeth knowing just what to do. Like a guillotine falling, his four yellowed saber teeth clamping shut on the throat, cracking the neck. Merciful and elegant. Maybe too merciful.

While the pointman stood dreaming, Brum paced the high fence, staring at the bag. When the man started to walk again, Brum glided along beside
him, only thin strands of wire separating them.

At the door concealed behind the fake rock wall, the pointman reached inside his jersey for the cord around his neck. His good-luck piece. He pressed his thumb against one of the sharp fangs until a single drop of blood beaded up. Then he gripped the whole rattlesnake head in his fist and held it tight for a few seconds.

He pulled his keys from their secure place inside his pants and unlocked the door, his breath coming faster now. Inside the keepers' area, he relocked the door, nodding at Brum's empty holding cage.

His hand trembled as he unlocked the door to the tiny closet-sized room where it would all happen. He stepped inside and locked the door behind him. Good zoo procedure. Always.

He smiled.

Then he sat on the floor of the tiny room, his back propped against the wall, and studied the steel door leading out to the exhibit. It was several inches thick, locked and bolted, with an observation window at eye level. The window was made of heavy wire-reinforced glass, two and one-half feet square--just big enough--he'd measured carefully.

He sighed with pleasure and untied the two plastic bags from his belt. He worked out the knots in the first bag and reached in to pull out the brisket. The slimy feel on his fingers made him grunt and the stench prickled his sinuses. It was intolerable. Simultaneously he sneezed and heaved the offending bloody slab against the metal door. It hit with a smack and fell to the floor.

The pointman couldn't hear him, but he knew for a certainty that Brum
was there, right on the other side of that door, probably with his nose pressed to the crack underneath. "Hungry, big boy? You cats like your meat at blood-heat, don't you? Well, just wait and see what I have for
you. It's what you've been wanting all your life."

From the other bag, he took a pair of soft cotton gardening gloves, a piece of beef jerky, and a brand-new pair of wire-cutters.

With his front teeth he grabbed the jerky and pulled hard to rip off a piece. He could take his time now. He had all night and very little work to do.

He wanted to make it last as long as possible.

I wish she would write again. She's too good to be gone.

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster