Bio

Lapsed librarian and former mystery bookseller Mary Jane Maffini is the award-winning author of twenty mysteries in three and a half series and two dozen crime shorts.  

MJ’s seven Camilla MacPhee mysteries are set in Ottawa, with a backdrop of the city’s festivals, and feature the hard-headed lawyer and her collection of challenging Cape Breton family and friends, including Alvin Ferguson, the world’s worst office assistant. You Light Up My Death, the seventh in the series is hot off the press and contains a wild ride around the famed Cabot Trail (steep cliffs, hairpin turns and hurricanes) as Camilla ditches her elopement plans to stop a determined killer.

Meanwhile, the two light-hearted Fiona Silk comic capers, Lament for a Lounge Lizard and Too Hot to Handle take place in a quirky village in West Quebec and feature the failed romance writer and reluctant sleuth with (unsurprisingly) no sex life but great survival instincts.

The six Charlotte Adams professional organizer mysteries have recently been optioned for television. Book five, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder, won the RT award for amateur sleuth in 2012. The recently released sixth Charlotte book, Death Plans a Perfect Trip, unfolds in Europe, and the trip gives us a glimpse of the dangerous sides of Paris, Lisbon and Cinque Terre. The first five in the series were recently reissued with great new covers by Beyond the Page. 

As Victoria Abbott, MJ collaborated on the five collector mysteries (Berkley Prime Crime) with her daughter, Victoria. The contemporary series draws on the works of the Golden Age of Detection. Book Four, The Marsh Madness, won the 2015 Bony Blithe for mysteries that make us smile.

MJ holds three Crime Writers of Canada awards and an Agatha for her short stories, as well as the Derrick Murdoch award. She is a charter member of The Ladies Killing Circle and has stories in all seven of the group’s anthologies.

She was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and has her BA (Hons) and MLS from Dalhousie University. After a career in libraries such as The Brewers' Association of Canada, Statistics Canada, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, and a wonderful ride as a co-owner of Prime Crime Mystery Bookstore, she has settled happily into a life of crime.

MJ is a frequent speaker, book club guest and workshop presenter. She lives and plots in Manotick, Ontario with a pair of rescued dachshunds at her feet. Her husband sleeps with one eye open.