D.R. Meredith, Doris to her friends and family, is a split personality. By day she is an ordinary woman
with a husband, two children, four grandchildren, a yellow mutt named Bo, and a cottage in a high-end
retirement community along with the requisite golf cart, who performs mundane chores like fixing
breakfast, feeding the dog, carrying out the trash, shopping for groceries, reading the newspaper and
cursing the politicians.
By night her dark side emerges, and she commits murder. Famous for the unique ways her victims are
“done in,” she has written 16 crime novels, 2 historical sagas, numerous short stories (most featuring
murder) 1 novelization of a television crime show, and more book reviews than she can count in her
thirty-plus years as a mystery writer. She has created three acclaimed mystery series, all set in the Texas
Panhandle. The first features a Texas county sheriff named Charles Timothy Matthews. In contrast, the
second series records the adventures of attorney John Lloyd Branson, and his unwilling legal assistant
Lydia Ann Fairchild, aided by his acquitted ax murderer secretary, Mrs. Dinwittie. The third features an
unemployed paleopathologist and female sleuth named Megan Clark, modeled on Mrs. Meredith’s
daughter. “The poor girl will no longer attend one of my signings after a group of fans recognized her as
the model for Megan Clark and swarmed her like a plague of locust.”
Meredith is a member of Western Writers of America where she was book review editor for Roundup
Magazine for twenty years and received a Spur Award in 2007 for her work. She was a regional director
and is a member of Mystery Writers of America, and is also a member of Sisters in Crime. She was a
founding member of the American Crime Writers’ League where she served as the National Liaison
Chair. She has been a book reviewer for various newspapers, a contributing editor for Kirkus Reviews,
and was the Western Fiction editor for seven years for What Do I Read Next?, a reference book for
libraries and bookstores published by the Gale Group. She has been a Spur judge eight times, an Edgar
judge three times, and most recently a judge for the Western Heritage Award. She has spoken at
various university writers’ conferences, including Rice University, West Texas A&M University, Emporia
State University, University of Texas at Dallas, University of North Texas, and the University of Nebraska.
She was a speaker at the Texas Book Festival where she met many of her writer friends. “We all had a
delightful conflab complaining about editors who don’t understand us, publishers who won’t spend
money to promote our books, and gossiping about who got a huge contract when he or she didn’t write
any better than any of us. I love writers’ conferences because we can let our hair down and vent for
hours about how we would all sell millions of books if we just had a decent advertising budget. Of
course, most of us would do no such thing, but we can dream.”
She can’t count the number of other writers’ conferences at which she has been a speaker and has lost
track of the libraries she has visited as a speaker. Only occasionally does she speak for pay, only for
expenses, and never charges a library. “I was a librarian for several years, and I know how tight their
budgets are. Libraries have always been important to me, and I consider my visits as pay back for all they
have done for me.”
Both The Sheriff and the Panhandle Murders and The Sheriff and the Branding Iron Murders won
“Oppie” Awards, a Texas recognition for Best Book of the Year in 1984 and 1985. Branding Iron Murders
and The Sheriff and the Folsom Man Murders were selections of The Detective Book Club. Of the John
Lloyd Branson titles, both Murder by Impulse and Murder by Deception were finalists for Anthony
Awards. Murder by Reference was selected to be included in “Murder in the Museum III: A Bibliography”
compiled a panel of museum curators as a study of how the public perceives the museum. The Megan
Clark series made the Best Seller list for Independence Book Stores.
She has been recognized for her literary achievements by both The Association of University Women
and Beta Sigma Phi, and has received nine President’s Awards from Western Writers of America. She
was one of three Texas mystery writers and the only woman featured in Texas Monthly. Texas Almanac
named Doris one of the state’s ten best mystery writers, an honor she considers makes her a resource
along with natural gas and beef cattle.
Moving with the times, Meredith also publishes her novels as ebooks, so her work is now only a click
away from readers worldwide. Her work is found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo. Audio tapes
of all her novels and her short story collection are available on Amazon or may be ordered directly from
Books in Motion. When not in her office working on five different manuscripts, she may be found
exchanging texts with her two children, watching videos of her grandchildren, and entertaining her
Facebook Friends with humorous posts. In what time is left of the day she is a book reviewer for the
New York Journal of Books.
Both of Meredith’s personalities live in Amarillo, Texas, with her husband, Mike, and a yellow mutt
named Bo.
