As a previous reviewer said, it has been a while since I first read Under the Beetle's Cellar, yet images from the book continue to dance unbidden in my thoughts. I can't explain it, because, though the story is excellent and the writing is adequate, I felt at the time that Under the Beetle's Cellar lacked soul. Maybe it was the fact that I never truly felt for the characters, particularly the main character, a bus driver who, along with 50 children, is held hostage by a religious cult. One of the threads of the story is that the bus driver tells stories to calm the children. I felt that these story-telling sessions lasted far too long. A page or two at a time would have been sufficient. The story was powerful enough to overcome my many misgivings but, in the hands of Stephen King or a host of other top writers, it would undoubtedly have been a bestseller. Yet still chunks of the story still keep floating back into my head. Funny that!

This books amazing. The plot was original and the characters engrossing.

Molly Cates is back on the scene when her connection with Samuel Mordecai, a fanatical cult leader, becomes known. Molly, a reporter in Texas, wrote about Mordecai for her piece on religious cults. Now Mordecai has kidnapped a school bus with children, and the bus driver, and is holding them hostage on his compound.

This book should be read by all mystery and thriller fans. Mary Willis Walker has no parallel when it comes to involved plots that could become convoluted and ridiculous in less capable hands. She tells the story of a boy turned cult leader who was terribly abused as a child, but never uses that fact to excuse his behavior, rather to understand how a boy emotionally and physically abadoned comes to such a horrific and devastating point. The scences between the bus driver and the school children are some of the best in fiction. You feel their terror and resentment of Mordecai and cheer when they outwit him.

A great read!

Mary Willis Walker weaves my favorite tale ever in Under the Beetle's Cellar, a gripping novel that grows as you read and finds you entangled by the end.
A former Southerner myself, Texas cults have always interested me. Walker gives the reader a story worth reading. It starts out slowly, stiffly even, with unnecessary and unrealistic dialogue utilized at times by the heroine, Molly Cates. But as the pressure builds, Walker lets go of all the [stuff] and just writes. The result is a beautifully suspenseful and finally, devastating novel.
Walker tells the story of an apopalyptic cult and its insane leader, Samuel Mordecai. Predicting the end of the world, they take hostage a busful of 11 children and their driver-- and bury them underground. The story flits madly back and forth between the children and their driver, the FBI negotiators, and the heroine reporter trying to find Samuel Mordecai's past above ground. The most wonderful part of this book is the movie-star like quality of Mordecai and the gasping reality of what he did and what he could have done with his life. He is a human being and Walker paints him as one without excusing his horrible actions.
Ruining the book's ending would be inexcusable. I will not--I will, however, say that a box of tissues would be well equipped. Walker manages to both fascinate and repel you, and the pages will whir by without you having realized it. For me, I was left gasping for air and wondering how I had finished so quickly. The book is a haunting masterpiece, so much more than simple crime fiction, and so much better than those over-hyped rivals like Sue Grafton and Stephen KIng. I am sadly wistful for more...the likes of you, Mary Willis Walker, are hard to find.

"The Red Scream" was written almost ten years ago and I was late coming to the party. I can say that am I ever glad I put on my best black dress, Grandma M's pearls and those slinky black shoes and made my appearance. By the time the party was over, I was raising my glass in a toast to Ms. Walker for writing "The Red Scream."

"The Red Scream" is about Louie Brock, a serial killer, who has been on death row for over ten years. Although he murdered many women, he was sentenced to death for killing Tiny, the wife of a rich and prominent builder in Austin, Texas. While Louis is in jail counting the precious few days before he is scheduled to be executed, there is a copycat murder. Louis confessed to the murder ten years ago but now is claiming he is innocent. Molly Cates, a crime reporter, has been involved with Louis' story since Tiny's murder and has written numerous articles and a book about Tiny's murder. She now questions whether Louis actually did murder Tiny or whether he was railroaded into confessing. Although she feels he is a despicable character and probably deserves to die for all the other women he murdered, she sets out to prove that he is innocent of that particular murder because she has a very strong sense of justice.

Did Louis murder Tiny ten years ago? We can't take his claim of innocence at face value because Louis is a notorious liar. If he is telling the truth this time, with a horde of suspects and possible murder scenarios, we are left guessing until the last few pages of the book.
For those who like a little romance along with their sleuthing, this book will deliver. During the course of the investigation, three times divorced Molly comes in contact with her first husband, Grady, who is a police officer. Are they still in love with each other after more than 20 years and, if so, can they get together. Another mystery that is not revealed until the end of the book.

The "voice" of this book is a strong condemnation of the death penalty. The fact that Louis has killed many people but that Molly is fighting to save him from being executed because he may be innocent of the particular crime that sent him to death row is an innovative and stunning way to approach this controversial subject.

Ms. Walker had made it to my list of favorite authors and I am looking forward to reading everything she has written.

I didn't want the book to end, but couldn't put it down!

Absolutely gripping, from beginning to end. The best of its genre I've read since "Silence of the Lambs." (But I wish they'd stop putting blurbs on her books that the killers is the most frightening since Hannibal Lecter: None so far has resembled him in the slightest, they are unique.)

I beg to disagree with the reader below who says the book trivializes its main subject: serial murder. I don't think it does it all; quite the contrary. There is a true moral dilemma here: What do you do, what do you say and to whom do you say it, if you find out a killer scheduled to be executed didn't commit the crime he is going to die for -- but IS guilty of OTHER murders he wasn't given the death sentence for?

Walker also does something very few other writers do: She makes ALL the characters come to life for the reader, not just the major ones. I would recognize the minor characters if I ran into them on the street.

Louie Bronk, a serial killer confesses to (among other things) the murder of a Austin Socialite Tiny McFarlan. Crime journalist Molly Cates dives into the mystery and produces her first "true crime book" - already headed for the best seller list. Bronk is now scheduled for execution, and Molly is attempting to write the final chapter in the story for her magazine. But when the second Mrs. McFarlan is discovered murdered in copy-cat style, Molly begins unraveling the tale she has written and believed to be true. Mary Willis Walker is a master of characterization and suspense, and uses lots of Texas landmarks. The interaction between Molly, her daughter and ex-husband will leave you howling; the visit with the governor was so real I felt I was there. The crazy day at the junk yard is astonishing - to say the least. Beware this book is not afraid of making political and religious judgments which will be sure to make some folks uncomfortable, but it is a spectacularly well written story and I hugely enjoyed the unabridged audiotape.

This is an ambitious attempt by Edgar Winner Mary Willis Walker starring Molly Cates for the third time. For the most part, it was a first-rate effort of combining politics, homelessness, and a 28-year-old unsolved mystery.

I found no part of the novel far-fetched. I might have done so before April 19, 1995, (Oklahoma City Federal Building explosion), but no more. A well-designed plan to release lethal nerve gas in the State Senate Chamber was shocking, but by no means unbelievable. The chilling non-personage treatment of homeless people is an everyday occurrence. In Texas, unusual politics is politics as usual.

The characterizations are superb, and the story is tightly plotted. Balancing two main stories, the homeless Sarah Jane and Molly's self-mutilating investigation of her father's death 28 years ago, is a tough assignment, and is not always successful. I found myself deeply involved with homeless Sarah Jane who seemed to me more interesting than Molly. It could be that crimes committed 28 years ago lack in immediacy. I would find myself drawn back to Molly's story by the repulsive former Sheriff Crocker. The worst part wasn't his disgusting persona, it was that it was so familiar. We have all met a Sheriff Crocker, and been far the worse for the encounter.

The story was taut, leading to an unbearably suspenseful showdown. Even if the house were burning down, you wouldn't move till you finished the last ten pages.

With an intriguing blend of Capitol mayhem and capital murder, Edgar Award winning author Mary Willis Walker returns to the scene of her last thriller, Austin, and to her previous protagonist, Molly Cates, an investigative journalist for "Lone Star Monthly.' Imaginatively conceived, All The Dead Lie Down offers seemingly parallel plots which eventually converge in a frightening yet exhilarating finish.

Sarah Jane Hurley, an alcoholic derelict known as Cow Lady because of the black and white spotted coat she wears, is huddled beneath the deck of an outdoor restaurant when she overhears a mephistophelian plot - the detonation of a poison gas bomb in the Texas State Capitol building. "Yessir," she hears. "...You're going to turn that Senate chamber into a gas chamber."

Cow Lady ignores this frightening revelation, seeking only drink with "the glow in her blood, the numbing buzz in her brain as it begins to work its magic."

Not missing a beat the rapidly pace narrative then switches to the legislature where Molly Cates is researching a story on the concealed handgun bill. Molly is as plucky and stubborn as ever, but misguided - obsessed with the belief that her father's death some 25 years ago was not a suicide as judged but murder.

Constantly reaffirming the links between an idealized father and herself - he was a writer, she is a writer; he loved the lake; she loved the lake - she has been consumed by her desire to solve what she believes was his murder. The result of her fixation has been the dissolution of her marriage and this distancing of her only child, Jo Beth, who has been raised by Aunt Harriet, her father's older sister.

Access to the Cates family archives eventually leads to unraveling the questions about her father's death. The answers, both unexpected and unwanted, force her to realize that her father was not the icon she believed him to be and enable a wiser Molly to say, "My father was grievously flawed. He is closer and dearer to me now than when I chose to believe him perfect."

Yet it was Molly's chance meeting with Cow Lady that irrevocably changed and endangered both women's lives. When a fellow street person wearing the trademark black and white coat is brutally murdered, Cow Lady realizes that the plotters know they were overheard and, once they realize they've killed the wrong woman, she will be next. Molly is the only person she can think of who might help her.

Unwisely responding alone, the journalist finds herself joining Cow Lady as the doomed prisoners of two avaricious sociopathic killers who would sell their sisters for a sou just as they've sold Cow Lady.

Thursting into overdrive the story takes a hariraising turn as a weakened Cow Lady and bludgeoned Molly try to escape execution style deaths and interment in Austin's city dump.

Mr. Willis' command of street patois adds authnticity to her tale, while her rich characterizations raise All The Dead Lie Down above conventional thriller level. Faces given to the homeless : Tin Can, a retarded woman with "baggy jeans rolled up on her stubby bowed legs" whose only companion is "Silky" a stray calico cat; and Lufkin, "his long, bony nose and thin red mouth just visible in the nest of his long black beard, streaked with gray," who always sharres his scrounged bounty.

Their portraits are vividly painted for us through Molly's eyes: "She glances at Sarah Jane and it occurs to her that this is where this woman lives all the time...inside this crack in the world where you become invisible, where the default mode is brutality and eventually a mean death." The plight of these people is memorable.

Ms. Willis has penned a seductive mix of family history and mystery - prime diversion on home ground, from the streets of El Paso to the plains of Lubbock (although Lubbockites may not care for the description of their fair city) to the shores of Lake Travis. Absorbing and suspenseful, All The Dead Lie Down is a first rate mystery thriller.

For the past twenty-eight years, Molly Cates, a Journalist on the Lone Star Monthly Magazine, believes her father was murdered and not a suicide victim as the official position states. While working on two stories (on the homeless and a bill allowing the concealment of weapons), Molly comes across new information on the death of her father.

While digging up her own past, a homeless person, the "Cow Lady" tells Molly that she overheard a plot to kill everyone inside the Texas Senate building when the gun bill goes on the floor for a vote. While Molly and the "Cow Lady" try to save lives from a militant gun group, she also learns the truth behind the death of her father.

Mary Willis Walker has won numerous awards for her mystery novels (ZERO TO THE BONE, THE RED SCREAM, etc.). Her latest book, ALL THE DEAD LIE DOWN is a good story, but not on the same quality level as the previous tales, thereby, leaving many readers disappointed. Still, many readers will enjoy the self-examination of the protagonist even as they will be a bit disappointed over the slow moving story line which takes a back seat to the wonderful characterizations.

Harriet Klausner

I admit, I might be getting too critical when it comes to mystery novels lately. But I have read so many that I start to know what a really good mystery novel is and which ones are not. "Zero At The Bone" was the first novel that I have read by Mrs. Walker. Don't get me wrong, the book wasn't bad at all, but the plot moved quite slowly and there was not much suspense. Most of the novel described in great detail the tasks and obligations that a zookeeper must go through. How to clean the cage, sweep the floor, feed the animals, take the snake out of his cage, and on and on. If you work at a zoo, you'll love this book I guarantee it! Although, the characters were well developed and likeable, I wouldn't put this book on my "must read list" at all. Not bad Mrs. Walker!

Brad Stonecipher

I really enjoyed Zero at the Bone. You never knew where the plot turns were going to take you. It is rare to find a mystery novel that leaves you guessing until the end. I found it a great read along with Mary Willis Walker's other books. I just wish she would write another one soon.

Walker does an excellent job with this book.

As you eneter Katherine's world it's crumbling away and then she gets notice that her father who she hasn't seen or heard from in year dies. She goes off to see him off and go through his extate. When she comes across something that doesn't seem right and this embarks her on a journey that will change her life.

Walker paints a powerful picture with her words. In one scene they come across a lion traped in a cage. You can actually see the lion and feel the cage and his imperfections with your hands. It will send chills up your spine.

This is her best book and the only one that stands on it's own. Her other books deal with continuing characters and are great, too.

Read. Enjoy. Then take a trip to a large zoo and enjoy the animals.

If you liked Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal with all there power you'll enjoy Mary Willis Walkers' work.

I don't usually write reviews, but I think buyers should be aware that this recording has little to do with Lamott's very good book, 'Bird by Bird'. These tapes are self-help tapes, like Julia Cameron's stuff. I was disappointed and a little bit annoyed. The box even says 'Writer's Audio Shop' on the front--very misleading. I say read the bird book and pass on these supposed 'word' lectures. Sorry Anne.

2% writing advice, 98% self absorption and psycho-babble. If your primary interest is self help for the compulsive, addicted etc. - this is the book for you; if you are looking for writing advice try John Gardner.

Listening to anne lamott lecture is like taking a refreshing cool bath on the hottest day of the year; it quenches the soul. Additionally, her wonderfully gritty voice doles out practical writing advice with sturdy handles, the kind you literally cannot get from any oridinary seminar. Much of this tape is subsumed within her bestselling book, Bird By Bird, yet there is plenty that is unique to Word By Word to make it well worth the price; not the least of which is hearing the poem which Anne's dog Sadie wrote to her, wherein Sadie ponders the question: 'Should she (the author) really be driving?' Hilarious and poignant as ever, Lamott mixes up wry asides with text from her writing manual, and makes everything difficult seem worth undertaking. All in all, a generous illumination and expansion of several classic Lamott topics; hearing her say it in her own words brings it crackling to life. Writing is hard work, but with Anne at your side, it's a shared journey.