Background

Susan Dunlap was born on June 20, 1943, in Kew Gardens, New York, United States.

Education

Dunlap majored in English at Bucknell College (now Bucknell University) in 1965 and earned a master's in teaching from the University of North Carolina the next year.

Career

Susan Dunlap was a social worker before an Agatha Christie novel inspired her to try her handwriting 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 currently lives in San Francisco.

Achievements

• Susan Dunlap is best known for her Jill Smith detective series, but she is also a prolific and much-loved writer of crime and mystery fiction, who during her long career has published more than twenty novels and numerous award-winning short stories.

Works

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  • Not Exactly a Brahmin 2012
  • A Single Eye 2013
  • Hungry Ghosts 2013
  • Power Slide 2010
  • Civil Twilight 2009
  • Karma 2012
  • A Dinner to Die for 1987
  • The Celestial Buffet and Other Morsels of Murder 2001
  • Pious Deception 1989
  • Rogue Wave 1991
  • The Last Annual Slugfest 1986
  • Crime's Leading Ladies 1995
  • An Equal Opportunity Death: A Mystery 1984

Membership

Dunlap helped to found the women’s mystery organization Sisters In Crime, where she served as a president.

Connections

Dunlap married Newell Dunlap in 1970. The couple currently lives in San Francisco.

husband:

Newell Dunlap