Catherine Mambretti

Life Before Mystery Obsession:

- Former college professor (Ph.D., University of Chicago)

- Textual critic, expert in manuscripts and rare books

- Scholar of 17th century literature

- Technical editor--astrophysics, medicine, & IT

- Training video scriptwriter

- Computer-based training consultant

Life After Mystery Obsession:

- Like her fictitious sleuth, Miss T. Iris Ginge, she has also been a juror and a reluctant stack reader (THE JUROR HANGS, a.k.a. VERDICT DEJA VU)

- THE HANGED JUROR BLOG (http://blog.thejurorinvestigates.com)

Mystery Highlights:

- "Measure Twice, Cut Once"--Handheld Crime, February, 2001

- "Painter of the Seven-eyed Beast"--Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2002

- "The Mute Monja, or the Walls Could Talk"--Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2004

- "Dead of Winter"--Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, December 2007

- THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, by Catherine Mambretti, is a collection of 8 short stories, including these, published Dec. 2008 by Light Pages, LLC.

- "Chalk Ghost"--a serial novella, TEXTNOVEL.COM 2009 prize winner

- THE JUROR HANGS, by Catherine Mambretti, is a courtroom-drama-plus-mystery novel set in 1952 Chicago

- THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, by Catherine Mambretti, is a collection of mystery short stories

- CHALK GHOST, by C. C. Mambretti, is a paranormal mystery set in contemporary Wisconsin

- Watch for "The Very Private Detectress," a short story in Grand Central Publishing's THE MYSTERY BOX (2013)

I'm a melting-pot American, with Jewish, Viking, and many, many Celtic ancestors. My last name is my husband's, but like him I have a fair number of Italian ancestors, too. My historical fiction draws on all these roots. "Painter of the Seven-eyed Beast" and "The Mute Monja" (short stories published in AHMM) are set in 12th century Catalonia (two centuries before the Inquisition banished my ancestors from the Iberian peninsula). Sleuths Ramon and Ermessenda are fresco artists, whose works I wish I could have studied in college, when I minored in Art History. "The Dead of Winter" (short story published in AHMM) draws on my Native American roots and love of 17th century England and its colonies. And in THE JUROR HANGS I plunge into the weird 1950s when I grew up--and into elegant, tough Chicago.

My current WIP (work in progress), SNOW GHOST, takes place in 1929 Oklahoma, where my great-great grandfather was a deputy sheriff for Indian Territory, my grandfather was a beat cop during the Great Depression and its plague of bank robberies, and where my father was born--a private in the Army who won a battlefield commission in the Battle of the Upper and Lower Vosges in WWII.

The Chicago suburb where I write is the site of the Marx Brothers' Farm and perhaps was the first rail-commuter community in the U.S. It was founded after the Great Chicago Fire by a brick manufacturer who was afraid of the fire-prone city. My house is over a hundred years old and haunted by interesting spirits (not the least of which are my husband and my pet Greek tortoise). I've lived in "this old house" almost since receiving my Ph.D. (in 17th century English literature and bibliography [a.k.a. non-forensic document analysis]) from the University of Chicago.