On her eleventh birthday, Barbara Gregorich was given a book of selected Sherlock Holmes stories, and from that moment on she was addicted to mystery. After she consumed the hundreds of titles in her local library, she moved to the library's basement storage area, delving into forgotten authors and titles of the past. The addiction continued: after the basement came Interlibrary Loan, and she spent years borrowing selected mystery titles from around the country.At the same time, she frequented bookstores of all kinds, buying and reading novels by mystery writers from many nations: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Cuba, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Russia . she traveled far and wide while in the comfort of her favorite reading chair.Besides being a mystery addict, Gregorich is also a writer, author of nearly 200 books, fiction and nonfiction. She has written two adult mysteries and has ghostwritten four Boxcar Children mysteries. In addition, she is a teacher of writing, and much of what she has to say in Guide to Writing the Mystery Novel: Lots of Examples, Plus Dead Bodies comes from her experience with people who want to write a mystery but aren't aware of the various decisions they must make as they create the story.

Gregorich hopes that her book will help them . and result in her having more mystery novels to read.