Mountford, B.J.

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Mountford, B.J.

PERSONAL: Born in San Francisco, CA; married; children: four. Education: Attended Wilson College. Hobbies and other interests: Clamming, crabbing, hiking on winter beaches, golf, digital photography.

ADDRESSES: Home—Emerald Isle, NC. Office—c/o Author Mail, John F. Blair, Publisher, 1406 Plaza Dr., Winston-Salem, NC 27103. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Former realtor and owner of a real-estate business; writer. Worked for National Park Service as off-season caretaker in Portsmouth Village, NC, and volunteer at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Cape Lookout Lighthouse, and Cumberland Island.

MEMBER: Sisters in Crime, North Carolina Writers' Network.

WRITINGS:

Sea-Born Women (mystery), John F. Blair (Winston-Salem, NC), 2002.

Bloodlines of Shackleford Banks (mystery), John F. Blair (Winston-Salem, NC), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: B.J. Mountford sold her successful real-estate business in the late 1990s and retired to Emerald Isle, North Carolina, to become a novelist. Her first published book was Sea-Born Women, a suspense novel set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where fifty-something Bert Lenehan has taken a position as the caretaker of Portsmouth, a deserted, wind-swept village. Bert never finds the solitude she is seeking, because almost immediately she becomes bewitched by spooky noises, rumors of foul play, and the legend of Jerushia, an eighteenth-century "sea-born woman." A Kirkus Reviews critic suggested that the plot "gets swamped by descriptions of exotic settings," but Kathy Roe in the Orlando Sentinel called Sea-Born Women a "virtual summer escape."

Bert returns in Bloodlines of Shackleford Banks, where she volunteers for the annual wild horse roundup on the Outer Banks barrier island. During the roundup a colt disappears, a volunteer is murdered, and several endangered sea turtles turn up dead. Bert and Hunter work together to find the killer and restore the island's delicate environmental balance. Rex E. Klett, in Library Journal, praised the novel's "brooding winter atmosphere."