When a PI vanishes and leaves a body in his office, it’s up to Jill Smith to pick up the pieces Jill 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 needs to 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.
Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is a prolific author of mystery novels. Born in the suburbs of New York, Dunlap majored in English at Bucknell College and earned a masters in teaching from the University of North Carolina. She was a social worker before an Agatha Christie novel inspired her to try her hand writing mysteries. Five attempts and five 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, medical examiner Kiernan O’Shaugnessy, and Zen student turned detective Darcy Loft. In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga, worked as a paralegal, and helped found the women’s mystery organization Sisters In Crime. She lives in San Francisco.