Professor Emerita of Ecology Is Now the Author of Mysteries
Charlene D'Avanzo taught ecology, marine ecology, natural history, environmental science, and environmental education at Hampshire for almost 40 years. One day, she abruptly retired to write mysteries.
“My decision to leave Hampshire happened after I attended a lecture by climatologist and UMass Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences Ray Bradley, a researcher whose work I respected and admired,” D’Avanzo says. “In the lecture, Bradley discussed his book Global Warming and Political Intimidation and how those in power tried to intimidate him and his colleagues in an effort to suppress scientific information about climate change. I was pretty upset after the lecture, and remember standing outside the auditorium thinking that I needed to do something.”
As a marine ecologist, D’Avanzo studied the impacts of global warming and pollution on marine ecosystems. She took students on field trips to Cape Cod, the Connecticut River, the Quabbin Reservoir watershed, and the Holyoke Range to help them appreciate ecology and nature up close.
Frustrated by polls like Gallup’s, which reported that more than 40 percent of Americans who responded said global warming was “exaggerated in the news,” and motivated by climate-change deniers, she decided to concentrate on writing.
She turned to the arts as a different way to bring home her points about the issue, and chose to write environmental stories to engage citizens in its reality. “As a scientist,” she says, “I love the puzzles that mysteries present, so my choice of mysteries was easy.”
D’Avanzo joined such professional organizations as Sisters in Crime, attended meetings, took workshops, and moved to Maine. Over just six years, she published a series of five books, which are all set there and have a common protagonist, Mara Tusconi, who is loosely based on her (for example, both are avid sea kayakers). From Cold Blood, Hot Sea (2016) to The Shark, the Girl, and the Sea (2021), each narrative involves a murder in a nautical setting. She takes readers into oceanographic research vessels and lobster boats, to archipelagos and remote islands.
“There’s no way for me to know if I’ve moved the needle on climate change,” she says. “That’s a core problem with environmental efforts of all sorts. The issues are pressing and enormous. We do what we can and then hope.”
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