Wendy Church

Wendy wrote her first novel, Murder on the Spanish Seas, after years traveling and working in a variety of careers. In between bartending, PhD research, management consulting, semiconductor marketing, and dive bar cleaning, she earned an MBA and a PhD in engineering. She brings what she learned from those careers and her degrees to her writing. Since she started writing in 2020 she’s published six novels.

Knife Skills, the first in Wendy’s Shadows of Chicago series, was released in March 2024. It received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, who said, “Church tosses in loving descriptions of world-class cuisine, detailed accounts of how to weaponize kitchen appliances against attacking gangsters, and a climax that will leave you gasping. Audiences who wish the TV series The Bear could make room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat.” The next novel in the series, Tunnel Vision, came out in March 2025, and was deemed by Kirkus as “…violent, dark, and steadily absorbing.” Tunnel Vision is followed by Rough Cut, released in February 2026.

Wendy’s debut novel, Murder on the Spanish Seas, takes brilliant but profane, introverted and frequently inebriated Jesse O’Hara on a cruise around the Iberian peninsula, where she and her best friend uncover something sinister. Murder received a starred review from Booklist, and was followed by Murder Beyond the Pale, where Jesse brings her talents and love of drinking to Ireland, and then by Murder in the Greek Isles. You can probably guess where that one takes place.

Because two series weren’t enough, Wendy forayed into police procedurals (with a twist), with Five Things I See, the first in the Grace Hartwell detective series, that takes place in Jacksonville, Florida. Five Things comes out in August, 2026.

Wendy lives in Seattle, Washington, with her partner, two cats and a dog to whom she is devoted.