Walker, Mary Willis

American crime-fiction writer, born as Mary Willis is the little town of Fox Point, Milwaukee, in Wisconsin. She attended high school in Milwaukee, and went on to study at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where she graduated with a B.A. in English. She subsequently worked as a teacher in several cities, including Fairfax, Vancouver and New York. In 1967, she married Lee Walker who later became the president of the Dell computer company. The couple lived in New York and Virginia before moving to Austin, Texas. There they had two daughters, and in 1978 Mary stopped working as a teacher.