Barbara Parker |
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Born in Columbia, South Carolina, where her father attended law school on the G.I. bill, Barbara Parker spent much of her childhood in the mountains of North Carolina, until the family relocated to Florida. She graduated from the University of South Florida, where she studied drama and history before going on to law school at the University of Miami. Married by this time with a daughter and a son soon to follow, Parker worked for a time as a prosecutor in the state attorney’s office, then for eight years as a sole practitioner. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, after a divorce, that it occurred to her to change careers, and then only by accident.
"My son was visiting his father for the summer, and I was writing him a short story. I thought, This is fun!" Parker decided to take up writing as a hobby, but the hobby became a new way of life. While still practicing law she completed her first novel (which she refuses to show to anyone). Unable to do justice to both writing and her legal career, she gave up the law, went back to school, and earned a master’s degree in creative writing from Florida International University (Miami). Parker was first published in paperback, a love story with elements of mystery to it. Her first suspense novel, Suspicion of Innocence (Dutton, 1994), was her master’s thesis and also a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first mystery novel by an American author.
Nearly ten years later, Parker still continues to hone her craft. She is noted for the meticulous research that goes into her novels. She has attended police seminars, gone to Cuba, hung out with a rock-and-roll band, and talked to sources as varied as fashion models, medical examiners, and ballet dancers. Writing has taken Parker around the country on book tours and to writers' conferences. She has appeared as a guest author aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 on a voyage from Sydney, Australia to Hong Kong. Her years in the legal profession were hardly wasted: The cast of characters who paraded through her office, and the lawyers and judges with whom she came into contact, have all helped her become a successful fiction writer.
Parker resides with her pug, Maximilian von Mango (Max), in a townhouse within walking distance of the beach in Lauderdale by the Sea, Fla. Her son works for a New York ad agency; her daughter is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.
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