Barbara D’Amato

Barbara D’Amato is an American writer, crime researcher, and playwright, who also writes as Malacai Black. Her most known work is the Cat Marsala series that debuted with the 1989 published title “Hardball”. The Cat Marsala series features Cat Marsala, a freelance investigative reporter based in Chicago. Her other works include the Gerritt De Graaf series, the Figueroa and Bennis series, and several freestanding novels. D’Amato has had a very successful career as an author though she worked in several different occupation before she turned professional. She has worked for attorneys researching criminal cases, as stage manager, tiger handler, carpenter making stages for magical illusions shows, assistant surgical orderly, and trainer with the Chicago PD. Of all the jobs that she had done, she asserts that writing is one of the best she ever held, as she gets to ask police questions that otherwise she could not ask. Over the years, she has won several awards including a Mary Higgins Clark Award at the Editors and Mystery Writers of America Party for Authorized Personnel of the Figueroa and Bennis series. She has held the presidency of the Mystery Writers of America between 1999 and 2000, and the Sisters in Crime International Presidency. Her work was the inspiration for the Unsolved Mystery segment on the Dr. John Branion case. In collaboration with her husband, she wrote “The Magic of Young Houdini” and “RSVP Broadway”, which were musical comedies that were performed in London and Chicago. Born in Michigan, she currently lives in Chicago and writes for Mystery magazine and the Sisters in Crime newsletter.