Munson, Douglas Anne 1949(?)-2003 (Mercedes Lambert)
MUNSON, Douglas Anne 1949(?)-2003 (Mercedes Lambert)
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for CA sketch: Born c. 1949 in Crossville, TN; died of cancer, December 22, 2003, in Norwalk, CT. Educator and author. Munson was best known for her crime and detective novels exploring the underside of life in Los Angeles. Named Douglas after an uncle who had died in World War II, Munson led a peripatetic life as a child because of her father's work as a reporter and writer. In college, at the University of New Mexico, she majored in Latin American studies. This was followed by a year spent living in Ecuador. She then returned to California and studied law at the University of California, Los Angeles. Munson worked for ten years as a dependency court attorney, and it was there that she gained the experience that would later become the background for her first novel, El Niño (1990). After publishing her detective book Dogtown (1991) under the Mercedes Lambert pen name, she abandoned law to become a creative writing teacher at UCLA. Later, she would also find work teaching English as a second language in San Francisco and the Czech Republic. Her third novel, Soultown (1996), was also published pseudonymously and, like the first two, was set in Los Angeles. At the time of her death she had completed a fourth novel, Ghosttown.
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2004, p. B16.
ONLINE
Westport Now,http://www.westportnow.com/ (January 4, 2004).