[3] Hart is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Oklahoma (class of 1958),[4] where she majored in journalism.
[5] After graduation, while her husband attended law school, Hart worked as a newspaper reporter for The Norman Transcript.
Until the publication of mystery novels by Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton, publishers had little interest in mysteries written by contemporary American female writers;[3] the success of these authors, however, opened the door for Hart's Death on Demand (1987), which became the first in a long-running series of the same name.
She has twice appeared as one of the featured mystery authors at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.[8] Hart has won awards throughout her four-decade writing career.
Hart's first commercially successful adult mystery series features Annie Laurance, proprietor of the Death on Demand bookstore, located in the fictional South Carolina island community of Broward's Rock.