All the Dead Lie Down
In this completely compelling novel from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Red Scream and Under the Beetle's Cellar, crime journalist Molly Cates is dragged into the underworld of the homeless, threatened by vigilantes and brought face to face with the violence in her own past.
In the heat of the Texan summer, there are few cool places for the homeless to hide. Cow Lady guards her patch under a creekside restaurant with grim ferocity, at least safe in the knowledge that nobody uses the deck area at night. Until the men with the strange voices arrive one evening and talk of guns and gas.
Cow Lady realizes that their plot against the State Senate is in deadly earnest, but why should she do anything about it? What's anyone ever done for her? Who'd believe her, anyway? Only the journalist covering the lives of her bag-lady companions - Molly Cates.
Molly's also following the passage of a bill which will legalize the carrying of hidden weapons. She doesn't know that a faction of extremist vigilantes believe that the bill will work against them, and that the right to bear arms is more important than any other, including the right to live…
Chilling, convincing, powerfully entertaining, this is suspense writing at its best.

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Zero At The Bone
First UK publication for this award-winning murder mystery from the author of Under the Beetle's Cellar and The Red Scream.
It's feeding time at the zoo.
Who's for dinner?
Katherine Driscoll hasn't heard from her father since she was a baby over thirty years ago. She's filled with suspicion when he writes her a letter, promising help. How does he know she needs it, Although she's the best dog trainer in Texas, she must find $90,000 immediately, or lose everything.
But when she tries to take her father up on his offer, he's already dead, mauled by a tiger in the zoo where he worked. Katherine resolves to investigate, drawn to uncover long-hidden family secrets as well as what's behind the tragedy at the zoo. It becomes all too apparent that the tiger isn't the only killer around.

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Under the Beetle's Cellar
See Review by Val McDermid
`Above them the wood cover was slid into place. The space they stood in seemed to shrink. They were sealed into a pit with the smell of rotting earth...'
For forty-six days, bus driver Walter Demming and eleven schoolchildren have been buried underground, held captive in the fortified compound of a fundamentalist cult. Deprived of daylight, fresh air and contact with the outside world, they endure the terrifying rants of the cult's leader, the charismatic Samuel Mordecai. He joyfully predicts the arrival of Armageddon - in exactly five days' time.
All attempts at negotiations have failed. Enter tenacious crime reporter Molly Cates, the only journalist ever to have interviewed Mordecai. It was the worst assignment of her life - until this one. She has gained his trust before, and she must try again. But this time the stakes are impossibly high. And she has just five days...
'In Under the Beetle's Cellar, Mary Willis Walker gives us a kidnap story of rare intensity and mounting tension. No, I didn't steal that from the blurb, the book actually is a superb suspense thriller.' Irish Times
'Under the Beetle's Cellar is an instant classic in mystery and suspense. The best chiller-thriller of the year.' James Patterson
"Nail-biting suspense form the first page, masterfully extended to the last" Kirkus Reviews
"A knockout novel. With unerring pacing... Walker leads up to her superbly orchestrated final act, which will leave readers cheering, weeping and gasping for breath" Publishers Weekly

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The Red Scream
A Murder, a killer confesses. End of story?
Eleven years ago, women driving on the desert Interstate were terrified of breaking down and falling victim to the Texas Scalper. But now he's safely behind bars, and one-time barber Louie Bronk is sentenced to die within the week for his final and most famous murder - that of glamorous socialite Tiny MacFarland.
Investigative reporter Molly Cates has just published Sweating Blood, the Louie Bronk story. So why is Tiny's husband trying to bribe her to stay off the concluding episode - the execution? Can it be that Bronk confessed to something he didn't do? Time is running out. And now the copycat murders have begun.
"One of the creepiest killers since Hannibal Lecter meets a plot and heroine worthy of Patricia Cornwell. Welcome to the big time, Mary Wills Walker" Kirkus Reviews
"Molly Cates - the ballsiest and best female protagonist" Kinky Friedman
"An intelligent, complex thriller" San Francisco Chronicle

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About The Author
Winner of the Agatha Award (for Zero at the Bone) and Edgar Award for Best Crime Novel (The Red Scream), Mary Willis Walker lives in Texas.

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Bibliography

All the Dead Lie Down (HarperCollins) (1998) 18 May 98 (Molly Cates)

Zero At The Bone (HarperCollins) (1998)

Under the Beetle's Cellar (HarperCollins) (1996) (Molly Cates)

The Red Scream (Molly Cates)

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