Eleanor Taylor Bland was born in Boston in 1944. At the age of fourteen, she married a sailor whose final tour of duty was at the Great Lakes Naval Air Station in Glenview, Illinois. The family then decided to remain in the area. In 1981, Bland earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and education from Southern Illinois University and worked at Abbott Laboratories until 1999. She has two sons, several grandchildren, and currently lives in Waukegan. In the early seventies, Bland was diagnosed with cancer and given two years to live. Her philosophy “Live in the Present” has served her well these past thirty years.

Bland has written twelve mysteries with African American Marti MacAlister as her tough streetwise cop who lives in a suburb about thirty miles north of Chicago with her two children. The author feels that Marti is an accessible character but not so common as to be boring. She has many different types of relationships that are richly explored within the twelve novels. As a human being, Marti has her own uniqueness and a fierce courage that enables her to handle cases that might otherwise be carelessly solved or lost within the system. With Marti as her protagonist, the author attempts to give voice to the homeless, mentally ill, elderly, and children. These individuals often fall through bureaucratic cracks and have few options. Bland’s goal, she says, is “to write in a way that brings public attention to their issues.”

Bland likes to create mystery novels because they are fun to read and leave lots of space for an author to incorporate timely issues in an enjoyable way. Bland adds, “we can comment on slices of life within the black culture. There’s a tremendous amount of diversity and this is the one genre where you can talk about it and have a little fun with it.” Bland explores black culture, but does not neglect vital concerns of all races. Though the author’s vision of a multi-ethic society has not yet become a reality, Bland wants all minorities to be “center stage,” and thus feels compelled to write to get her message to those willing to listen. Marti MacAlister and all her friends are slowly but surely creating the multi-ethic society of her author’s dreams.

Novels

Dead Time (1992)
Slow Burn (1993)
Gone Quiet (1994)
Done Wrong (1995)
Keep Still (1996)
See No Evil (1998)
Tell No Tales (1999)
Scream in Silence (2000)
Whispers in the Dark (2001)
Windy City Dying (2002)
Fatal Remains (2003)
A Cold and Silent Dying (2004)

3/05 MC