'Ecstatic, fervent literacy': Award-winning Austin mystery writer Mary Willis dies at 81

Austin novelist Mary Willis, who died Nov. 4 of complications from dementia at age 81, adored a mystery.

She doted on books, languages, art, friends, games, travel, dogs, progressive political activism, teaching and rearing her two daughters, Amanda and Suzanna.

To boot, the author, who employed the pen name "Mary Willis Walker" wrote, and wrote well.

She won two of the highest honors for mystery writing: The Agatha Award for best first mystery for "Zero at the Bone" in 1991, and the Edgar Award for best novel for "The Red Scream" in 1995.

She followed good company: The first prize is named for Agatha Christie, the second for Edgar Allan Poe.

For Willis, engagement with books started but did not end at home.

"Literacy experts say that adults modeling 'joyful literacy' is important for teaching kids how to be readers, and my mother modeled ecstatic, fervent literacy," said her daughter Amanda Walker. "She was the biggest reader I've ever known, and she was always giving me books to read. She was totally unconcerned with age-appropriateness in reading material; she wanted me to grapple with big ideas as soon as I was able to read the words."

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'Interested in others, generous, relentlessly curious'

Willis was born on May 24, 1942, in Fox Point, Wisc., the youngest of 3 girls.

"As a girl, Mary was a bit of a tomboy," said lifelong friend Susie Devening, "though she and I were always reading. We had an idyllic childhood in Milwaukee, loved the big snows, played all day outside and came home for dinner. She loved winter until she lived in Buffalo during the snowed-in-nothing-to-eat winters with two babies."

Willis graduated from Duke University with a degree in English in 1964 and earned a master's degree from Boston University afterward. She taught high school English at a girls' school in Harlem, NY.

"She saw their struggles and deprivations and vowed to herself always to support whatever improved life for 'her girls,'" Devening said. "That was when she became a caring liberal. Protests and activism were real to her. She loved teaching and went back to teach ESL after she learned Spanish and made many trips to Mexico."

In 1967, she married Lee Walker, an entrepreneur and the first president of what would become Dell Technologies, later a civic leader and University of Texas professor. They divorced when she was 51. After the divorce, she reclaimed the name Mary Willis, but continued to publish under the moniker "Mary Willis Walker."

Pursuing her interest in the wider world, Willis traveled with friends and family, sometimes on the spur of the moment, to Egypt, Mexico, Israel, France and Uzbekistan, among other spots.

"Did I mention we laughed a lot?" said longtime friend and artist Becky Cohen. "Mary watched over her wonderful father, Ralph Willis, when he moved to Austin when he was in his 90s, and took time to visit my parents when I moved them here for their final chapter. We shared the pleasure and the pain of caretaking."

"Mary was always kind and caring," Cohen continued. "'Kind' seems like such an inadequate word, but now that I think of it, I recall only easy exchanges between us. No arguments. She was not only interesting, she was interested in others, generous, relentlessly curious. I felt — and feel — fortunate to be her friend.

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Becoming an auspicious author late in life

"She loved reading, reading mysteries in particular, and one day — post-divorce, of course, out from under the shadow of her first life — she wrote one," Cohen says. "And then another and another. We lived near each other, which made it easy to spend time together. I would hitch up my dog and walk to her house, and we would hit the off-leash trail, then go for coffee and croissants at Texas French Bread with (friends) Dinah Chenven and Kristy Ozmun."

Despite her passionate literacy, few could have predicted her late-in-life success as a mystery writer. Celebrated Texas author and journalist Stephen Harrigan was shaken by her suspenseful tales.

"Back in the ’90s, I was writing a lot of television movies," Harrigan says, "and as I recall, Marlo Thomas’s production company had bought the rights to Mary’s novel 'Under the Beetle’s Cellar,' and my agent wanted to know if I was interested in possibly adapting it. I had read 'Zero at the Bone' and knew that Mary could write a really suspenseful novel, but I was unprepared for how blood-freezing 'Beetle's Cellar' was.

"Under the Beetle's Cellar" echoed some news events from the late 20th century.

"It was about a cult leader who hijacks a bus full of schoolchildren and hides it underground," Harrigan continues. "The phrase 'ticking clock' does not even begin to describe the relentless sense of dread as the options run out for the abducted kids and for the crime reporter who gets drawn into the negotiations. I desperately wanted to write the screenplay, but for some reason — maybe because too many viewers might have dropped dead of heart attacks — the project never went forward. Whether it’s ever a movie or not, it will always to my mind be a peerless novel of suspense."

Building a life around books helped set the stage for such literary achievements.

"It was normal in our household to memorize Gerard Manley Hopkins poems and burst into recitation at any moment," daughter Amanda Walker says. "I think she wanted her children to grow into adults who would read good books and then sit around drinking wine and arguing about them with her, which is exactly how I turned out. She was always getting involved with writing groups and poetry groups and befriending really cool people. How many people can say they met Steve Weinberg, Kinky Friedman, Lars Eighner and Lawrence Wright through their mother?"

Willis spent her last days in the memory care unit of a nursing home after losing first her language and then her memory over several years

"I can't imagine a crueler death for her," Amanda Walker says. "It was absolute hell for someone whose life was language."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin novelist known as Mary Willis Walker has died at 81