Mary Patterson, officially our oldest Madame of Mayhem, passed away last week after a long illness. She kept her wonderful sense of humour up to the last day of her life.

Mary joined the Mesdames in 2017 after she won our short contest for new crime writers. Her light-hearted winning story,” Night Vision”, starred a cat who was much smarter than his PI owner. Ironically, Mary didn’t know much about cats, having been a life-long dog fan!

She was a gifted ceramic artist until arthritis forced her to walk away from her potter’s wheel, but that gave her time to write crime fiction and to pen articles about gardening for community newspapers. She and her husband, Fred, remained active in the planning and planting of community gardens.