Eleanor Taylor Bland: R.I.P.

Sad news. Eleanor Taylor Bland died this week at the age of 65. Bland was the author of 13 mystery novels featuring female African-American Chicago homicide detective Marti MacAlister, including Dead Time, Windy City Dying, Fatal Remains and her most recent, A Dark and Deadly Deception (2005)

Bland lived in Waukegan, IL, she was a 1981 graduate of University of Southern Illinois. During her career, she received an Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award, a Chester Himes Mystery Fiction Award and was a 2001 Gold Pen Award nominee.

Share your memories of and tributes to Eleanor Taylor Bland at The Outfit: A Collective of Chicago Crime Writers.

Read Eleanor Taylor Bland's Author! Author! essay, "Marti MacAlister: Good Cop, Bad Cop--Fact vs. Fiction," in Mystery Readers Journal: The Ethnic Detective, Part I, (14:2), 1998.