Claudia Bishop (Mary Stanton) is the author of The Hemlock Falls mystery series and the Casebooks of Dr. McKenzie mystery series, and the editor of three mystery anthologies, Death Dines at 8:30, with Nick DiChario, Death Dines In, with Dean James, and A Merry Band of Murderers, with Don Bruns. As Mary Stanton, she is the author of two adult novels and eleven middle-grade novels. She also writes for television. Born in Florida, she grew up in Japan and Hawaii. Her career as an actress/singer was confined to community theater until she was hired as a nightclub singer in Minneapolis. (She was fired soon after.) The Merry Band of Murderers song "Ophelia's Revenge" was inspired by the silliest of Mozart's concerti for French Horn. "A lifetime of modestly rowdy behavior has left me with no voice at all, " she admits. "If it hadn't been for Greg Sattcherwaite, the musician who made the 4th Horn concerto singable, and the technical wizardry of Chuck Hemann at Palm Beach Sound Studios who made me able to sing it, I would have booted the whole project.