Mystery Women Authors

Lia Matera

Biography

Lia Matera graduated from Hastings College of Law and later taught at Stanford Law School.

Books

Laura Di Palma Mysteries

The Smart Money (1)

Di Palma returns to her hometown to get revenge on her ex-husband for a decades-old murder.

Published Bantam 1988 (out of print)

The Good Fight (2)

Attorney Laura Di Palma is in complete control of her high-profile life -- she's about to become a partner, signed lithographs decorate the walls of her spectacular San Francisco apartment, and her Mercedes is paid for. But control turns to utter chaos when her sick lover, Hal, disappears from his hospital bed without a word. Then Sandy, the detective she works with (and her former lover), begins pressuring her for a second chance. At work, she has a radical client who's accused of murdering an FBI agent. It's too much to handle, but Laura has no choice.

Frantically searching for Hal, Laura also attempts to build her client's controversial defense. Meanwhile, she must keep Sandy at a distance even as she needs his help. When a second man is murdered, Laura's carefully tailored life begins to unravel
before her eyes . . . .(From Amazon.com)

Anthony and Macavity Nominee

Published 1990 (Out of print)

A Hard Bargain (3)

Laura Di Palma, rising young star in San Francisco's high-powered law circles, has escaped to the country with her battered and taciturn lover, Hal, to take stock of her life. There her former lover, private detective Sandy Arkelett, shows up with the disturbing, emotional case of a young woman's suicide -- which may have been encouraged by her husband. As confused lives and twisted motives swirl around her, Laura discovers that
morality and honesty are often at odds with each other, and may have nothing to do with the truth.

Published Mass Market Paperback 1993

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Face Value (4)

Laura hangs out her shingle. She's ready to take any case, even a  woman who claims that her New Age guru videotapes group sex sessions for therapeutic reasons--tapes that wind up at the local porno parlors. Laura's investigation takes her from a private fantasy island to kinky sex club back rooms to corporate boardrooms.

Published Mass Market Paperback 1995

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Designer Crimes (5)

When a fellow lawyer is slain and utters the dying words "designer crimes, " San Francisco Bay Area attorney Laura Di Palma goes to work untangling the cryptic message. Meanwhile, she's also defending a friend accused of murder. Trouble
follows closely on her heels, and to find the truth, she must detour off the high road--a move that may cost her more than her career.

Published Mass Market Paperback 1996

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Willa Jansson Mysteries

Havana Twist (7)

Attorney Willa Jansson's mother has never balked at breaking the law, especially not for a good cause. So when Willa learns her mother has flouted federal regulations and gone off to Cuba, she figures it's just a harmless pilgrimage to lefty Graceland. But when her mother doesn't return with the rest of her peacenik tour group, Willa fears the feds might consider the trip "trading with the enemy" -- with a penalty of ten years in prison and a $100,000 fine. Worse, her mother's bleeding heart may finally have gotten her into more trouble than she can get herself out of.

In Lia Matera's Havana Twist, Willa risks her career and passport by rushing to Cuba to retrace her mother's steps. But she finds that nothing there is quite as it seems. Following clues to neighborhoods tourists never see, through secret tunnels beneath the street, and into the finest luxury hotels, Willa is manipulated, misled, and nearly arrested. And in the meantime, newfound reporter friends -- or are they CIA agents? -- disappear as suddenly and inexplicably as her mother did.

Soon the U.S. State Department, the Cuban Interior Ministry, and Willa's old flame, San Francisco Homicide Lieutenant Don Surgelato, get into the act. But politics and police work are a poor substitute for those things only a daughter would know. So, in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Willa follows her mother's trail from Havana to Mexico City, from California back to Havana...all the while keeping barely one step ahead of two angry governments and at least one ruthless killer.

Never before have the stakes been as high or as personal for Willa Jansson. The result is a pulse-pounding, white-knuckle ride of a mystery that shows Lia Matera at her very best.

Published 1998 Simon & Schuster Hard Cover

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Where Lawyers Fear to Tread (1)

Overworked, over-caffeinated, and as cranky as a sequestered jury, Willa Jansson has a law review to get out. As second in command to the brilliant Susan Green, the ideal law student and perfect editor, Willa's rank jumps up a step when Susan's head is bashed in over a brief at the law review office.

Everyone at Malhousie, the small San Francisco law school, is stunned by the crime -- including professors and the staff at the review. And none of them are above suspicion. Willa, now in charge and none too happy about it, launches a private investigation that succeeds not only in compromising her honor, but getting her arrested, as she chases one blind lead after another and comes face-to-face with the banality of evil . . . .(From Amazon.com)

Anthony and Macavity Nominee

Published Mass Market Paperbacks 1991

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Radical Departure (2)

Working for a fat-cat San Francisco law firm, Willa Jansson thought she'd seen everything. Then her boss dies from hemlock poisoning. Things go from awful to outrageous when Willa's rad-lib mother, a former client of the deceased, is suspiciously
named in his will to inherit his fantastic home in the hills. By now Willa is frantic to discover what's going on around her. Poking into the recent past and the apolitical present, she fishes out an old boyfriend she'd rather forget, a cop she hates on principle, and a famous law firm that can barely make ends meet. It's a pretty good catch for a first-year associate--considering that, in the meantime, someone is trying to kill her....

Published Mass Market Paperbacks 1991

Edgar Allen Poe and Anthony and Macavity Nominees

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Hidden Agenda (3)

Willa Jansson had always thought of herself as a right-thinking left-wing lawyer. But when her radical San Francisco law firm closes after the murder of its chief rabble-rouser, she does the next worst thing and takes a job as a high-priced corporate attorney. Soon, two partners in her new firm are killed, and suddenly Willa is the prime suspect. Now Willa is forced to play hardball with the big boys before the third strike is called on her....

Published 1992 Mass Market Paperback Reprint

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Prior Convictions (4)

Willa Jansson is a cynical ex-radical who worked in an L.A. corporate law firm for a year and has the scars to prove it. Back home in San Francisco, her still activist parents ask her to do a favor for an ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. And she quickly becomes embroiled in a case of conflicting interests, slow-dying passions, and political grudges that can kill....

Published 1992 Mass Market Paperback Reprint

Edgar Allen Poe Nominee

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Last Chants (5)

In Last Chants, Willa Jansson jumps to the defense of Arthur Kenna, an eccentric mythologist. Suspected of having done away with his assistant, an Indian shaman who was helping him program a computer in the mystic arts, Arthur flees to a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains with Willa in tow. As she searches for clues at the scene of the crime, a magnetic power spot in the wilderness that attracts New Agers and computer junkies, she flushes out more than she bargained for, including two industrial spies, a family of mushroom hunters and a hairy, naked man who claims to be the demigod Pan.  (From Amazon.com)

Published Mass Market Paperbacks 1997

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Star Witness (6)

Just when attorney Willa Jansson is about to take a little time off from her job at a San Francisco multimedia firm, a friend calls in a special favor. So, on her first day of what should have been her well-earned vacation, Willa's off to Santa Cruz to solve what she hopes will be a simple case of vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run. But Willa is about to discover that nothing about this case -- or the town where it occurred -- is quite as it seems.

Alan Miller's sports car went over an embankment and onto the coastal highway below, landing atop another car and killing its driver. But there are no tire tracks, no witnesses, and Miller's injuries aren't consistent with a car crash. Unable to recall where he was just after the accident, Miller's memory is jogged under hypnosis -- a recollection so far-fetched that Willa knows it will never stand up in court. All of a sudden, seemingly idyllic Santa Cruz is rife with dangerous secrets, and Willa must outrun helicopters, snipers, reporters, her own interfering mother -- and try to maintain her credibility and her career by making the jury buy her client's out-of-this-world alibi. If she can just keep the witnesses alive long enough to testify....  (From Amazon.com)

Published Mass Market Paperbacks 1998

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Web site address

Lia Matera's Home Page

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Page created by Leone Moffat.

Last updated 24-Apr-2002