About the Author

Dolores Johnson passed away in April, 2010. She was a journalist who worked on newspapers in Oregon, California, Wyoming and Colorado, but she always wanted to write and sell a murder mystery. She tried writing books about an investigative reporter and a newspaper editor, but it wasn't until she wrote a book about a dry cleaner, using her background as a free-lance writer and field reporter for American Drycleaner, that she met with success.

Dell published her first novel, Taken to the Cleaners, in 1997. It was
selected as the launch book for a Signature Series by the Mystery Guild where it was later chosen by members as first runner-up in an annual New Discovery Award contest. Her subsequent books in the series, Hung Up to Die, A Dress to Die For, Wash, Fold, and Die, and Homicide and Old Lace, all Dell Mysteries--plus Buttons and Foes and Taking the Wrap, hardcovers from St. Martin's Press--were also alternate selections of the Mystery Guild. The final release in the series, also from St. Martin's, is Pressed To Kill (January 2007). 

Johnson gave credit to her two critique groups for talking her into starting the series about a dry cleaner instead of a more traditional sleuth. 

She lived in Aurora, Colorado with her husband.