Lo Monaco

Lo Monaco writes PI mysteries the way only someone who has actually dusted a crime scene for prints can.

Before she wrote about Terry Strong, she was Terry Strong. Five years as a Fingerprint Technician for a sheriff's department. Five years as a group counsellor for juvenile offenders. Sixteen years living in Sicily, absorbing the atmospheric texture that permeates every page of her fiction. An operatic career that took her through multiple American opera companies and culminated in directing the Schola Cantorum for the Church of Sant'Anna.

Lo Monaco is a three-time Chanticleer International Book Award shortlisted author, a former Shamus Awards judge, and a member of Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Crime Writers Association, and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Her short story "A Man of Honor" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2001 and won second place in the Akery National Literary Competition in Italy.

She created Terry Strong, PI because she wanted a female detective who was real. Not perfect. Not invincible. But smart, funny, relentless, and deeply human. A Black Belt in Taekwondo. A former model. A woman who investigates with both her mind and her instincts, accompanied at all times by Tim, her overgrown Fox Terrier who looks like a curly-haired Dalmatian and co-stars in every case.

The readers who find Terry Strong tend to stay with her.

The Terry Strong, PI series: Lethal Relations; Poison Butterfly; Suddenly Deadly; Fallen in a Dark Uneven Way