Her parents were survivors of the Holocaust who met after the war, her father's first wife and daughters having been murdered in the camps.
She graduated in English from Stern College for Women and met her husband while studying for a master's at UCLA.
won the Anthony Award for best paperback original and was adapted into film in 1995 as Perfect Alibi, starring Teri Garr, Hector Elizondo, and Kathleen Quinlan.
[2] Her first series is set in Los Angeles and concerns Jessie Drake, a divorced homicide detective who has a difficult relationship with her mother and sisters.
In the second novel, Angel of Death, Jessie unexpectedly discovers that her mother is Jewish and that family members were murdered in the Holocaust.