Rebecca Rothenberg (March 16, 1948 – April 15, 1998)

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Rebecca Rothenberg (1948-1998) was a writer, musician, epidemiologist, amateur botanist, president of the San Gabriel chapter of the California Native Plants Society, and the author of the Claire Sharples Botanical Mystery series. The Bulrush Murders, was nominated for the Anthony and Agatha Awards, and was named as one of the Top Ten Mysteries of 1992 by the Los Angeles Times. After her untimely death in 1998 (due to brain tumor), her friend and colleague, Taffy Cannon (author of the Nan Robinson series and the Agatha and Macavity Award-nominated Guns and Roses) completed the manuscript of The Tumbleweed Murders.

Rebecca Rothenberg wrote three botanical mysteries featuring Claire Sharples, an M.I.T. microbiologist that has just arrived in California's San Joaquin Valley to take up an agricultural research job. The first book, The Bulrush Murders, Claire investigates the circumstances surrounding the strange death of a young Mexican friend who drunkenly plunges his motorcycle into the reservoir. In her second adventure, The Dandelion Murders, Claire stumbles upon a body in a local drainage ditch. A yellow dandelion-like flower is found on the body but it doesn't grow in the citrus groves and vineyards of the San Joaquin Valley. It belongs in the High Sierras. In her third mystery, The Shy Tulip Murders, Claire tries to help an environmentalist group to save a mountain forest from loggers by verifying the "shy tulip" in the timber stand. Instead, she locates a dead body. Ms. Rothenberg left an unfinished fourth mystery.

Source: http://www.rebeccarothenberg.com/