Judith E. Winston

Judith Winston is a marine biologist and writer currently living on the Atlantic coast of Florida. Childhood summers at Plum Island, Massachusetts, convinced her she wanted to spend the rest of her life exploring the ocean. In her scientific career she has carried out research in seas from Alaska to Antarctica. She has published a textbook on taxonomic procedure, Describing Species, as well as more than 100 scientific and popular non-fiction articles.

Since third grade, when she hid under her parents’ bed to read the borrowed library mysteries they left on their bedside table, Jude has been a mystery reader. Sea Weeds is her first mystery novel. It is part of a series of marine biology mysteries, Sea Creatures, with professional biologist Elora Murphy, as amateur detective.

Scientists, other than medical scientists, have been pretty much ignored in the mystery genre. But not only is the ocean are full of great ways to kill people, but the habitats favored by marine biologists – such as isolated marine stations with transient populations of obsessively focused people – offer situations where interpersonal relationships can shift from ecstatic to homicidal as fast as tropical weather in hurricane season.