Mornings would find Betty at the zoo's Monkey Village, a large free-run enclosure where Squirrel Monkeys from Central America would scurry along the paths ahead of fascinated school children. Her job was to keep little hands from coming in contact with the very cute, but sharp-toothed, monkeys. Betty has not given up her habit of talking to the animals -- especially Jezabel, the banana-loving Giant Anteater who was the inspiration for The Anteater of Death, the first book in the series, ending with The Panda of Death. Despite their titles, no animals are ever harmed in the Gunn Zoo books, but unpleasant humans die like flies.

In her Paris series, Betty harkens back to the Roaring Twenties of Paris, France, and the creative folks who lived and partied there, including Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso in Lost In Paris, where her detective is Zoe Barlow, an ex-pat American artist.

Before beginning to write mysteries full time, Betty was a journalist. She wrote articles ranging from hard news to features, and has interviewed everyone from U.S. presidents to astronauts who walked on the moon, as well as Nobel Prize winners, the homeless, the hopeless, the dying, and polygamy runaways. Most of her Lena Jones mysteries are based on actual stories she covered as a reporter. She was a syndicated book reviewer for 30 years, and still teaches writing at the university level. Betty is a member of National Federation of Press Women, The Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime.