Mavens of Mayhem – Our Author Members

Frankie Y. Bailey is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany (SUNY). She specializes in mass media/popular culture, and crime history. Her nonfiction books include African American Mystery Writers. Frankie’s mystery novels feature Southern crime historian Lizzie Stuart, and Albany, NY police detective Hannah McCabe. Her short stories have been published in EQMM and in several anthologies. Two of the stories feature former WW II Army nurse Jo Radcliffe. Frankie is working on her sixth Lizzie Stuart novel. She is also working on a historical thriller set in 1939. Frankie is a past executive vice president of MWA and a past president of Sisters in Crime National.

USA Today bestselling author Catherine Bruns writes four series including the Cookies & Chance and Italian Chef mysteries. Her book For Sale by Killer won the 2019 Daphne du Maurier award for Mainstream Mystery/Suspense. She’s wanted to be a writer since the age of eight when she wrote her own version of Cinderella. Fortunately, Disney never sued.

Libby Cudmore's debut novel, THE BIG REWIND (William Morrow 2018) received a Kirkus starred review and praise from Publisher's Weekly, Romantic Times and Booklist. She is the author of the Martin Wade P.I. series at Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and her short fiction has been published in Tough, The RS-500, Memoir Mixtape, The Big Click, the Stoneslide Corrective, PANK, the Barrelhouse blog, the anthologies HANZAI JAPAN, WELCOME HOME, MIXED UP and A BEAST WITHOUT A NAME, and is forthcoming from The Normal School. She is the associate editor at Rock & A Hard Place and the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology LAWYERS, GUNS & MONEY (with Art Taylor).

Tina deBellegarde writes the Batavia-on-Hudson Mystery series which debuted September 2020 with Winter Witness. Her debut was nominated for an Agatha Award, and was a finalist for a Silver Falchion Award and Chanticleer's Mystery & Mayhem Award. Her short stories appear in the Mystery Writers of America anthology A Stranger Comes to Town and Best New England Crime Stories. Find her winning flash fiction online at Retreat West, Ad Hoc Fiction and Reflex Press. Tina lives in Catskill, N.Y. For more visit tinadebellegarde.com and sign up for her newsletter.

Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney English Mysteries and The Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries. The Evening’s Amethyst is the fifth in the Nora Tierney series. Her short story “Quiche Alain” is in the Anthony Award-winning Malice Domestic Anthology, Murder Most Edible. She is also Managing Editor of Bridle Path Press, and a crime book reviewer.

Syrl Kazlo, a retired teacher, lives in upstate New York with her husband and two very lively dachshunds. Kibbles and Death is the first book in her Samantha Davies Mystery series, featuring Samantha Davies and her loveable dachshund, Porkchop. When not writing she is busy hooking, rug hooking that is, reading and enjoying her family. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Mavens of Mayhem.

Retiring from the NYPD as a Lieutenant in 2008, I went to work for the NYC Legal Aid Society as an apprentice trial lawyer in their Criminal Division (having gotten my law degree from Fordham Univ. Law School nights while a young cop). After 18 years trying cases in NYC Courts, I relocated to Albany, where I’ve continued in the Criminal, Family and Federal Courts in half-a-dozen Counties besides Albany. Meanwhile, I edited an anthology of original crime stories, ‘Queens Noir’ (Akashic Books, NYC); had two novels published, ‘Bodies In Winter’ and ‘The Cold Room’ (Severn House Publishers, England and U.S.); and 6 short stories, including one in Best American Mystery Stories 2007.

Eleanor Kuhns is the 2011 winner of the Minotaur/Mystery Writers of America First Crime novel for A Simple Murder. Her newest Will Rees Mystery was released January 5, 2021. In Death in the Great Dismal, Rees and Lydia travel to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia at the request of their old friend to rescue his wife. Taken from the streets of Durham Maine, Ruth was sold into slavery but has escaped to a village of fugitives in the swamp.

Erica Obey pursued an academic career specializing in the women folklorists of the nineteenth century, before she decided she’d rather be writing the stories herself. She is the author of five novels -- including the award-winning Curse of the Braddock Brides and the recently released Dazzlepaint.

A former language teacher and business owner, Carol Pouliot writes the acclaimed Blackwell and Watson Time-Travel Mysteries, including the latest Death Rang the Bell. When not writing, Carol can be found reaching for her passport and packing a suitcase for her next adventure. Sign up for Carol’s newsletter and learn more at the website linked below.

Michael Sinclair is a native of Albany and completed a master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University at Albany. He is a librarian and teacher and enjoys reading, travel, architecture, and history. His novels are set in Albany and Schenectady during the jazz age of the 1920s.