Amanda Kyle Williams, a crime fiction writer in Decatur, Ga., died August 31 at the age of 61, Decaturish reported. The cause of death was endometrial cancer.
Williams was best known for the Keye Street series of detective novels that began in 2010 with The Stranger You Seek. The book, which was shortlisted for both the Townsend Prize for Fiction and the Shamus Award, starred Asian-American private investigator Keye Street, a former FBI agent and recovering alcoholic dragged into the search for a serial killer stalking Atlanta. The series was published by Bantam.
In creating the character of Keye Street, Williams drew on her own history of substance abuse and was inspired in part by her brother's adopted daughter, a young Asian girl who "sounded like Ellie Mae Clampett," the Beverly Hillbillies character played by Donna Douglas. According to Decaturish, while on her way home from her brother's house after Thanksgiving one year, Williams started wondering "how her niece would be seen by others," and suddenly the character who would become Keye Street popped into her head. She then "pulled over to the side of I-75" and wrote down a handful of lines in that new character's voice.
Williams was born in Virginia in 1957 and grew up in Colorado and Georgia. In a surprising turn for someone who would make a living as an author, Williams did not read her first book until the age of 23. She had undiagnosed dyslexia and dropped out of high school almost unable to read. In her teens and young adulthood she struggled with substance abuse and addiction, and prior to deciding to become a writer at the age of 28, Williams held a succession of odd jobs in the Decatur area, working as a pet sitter, house painter, embroiderer and more.
Her career as a writer began in 1990 with the publication of Club Twelve, a spy novel featuring a lesbian CIA agent named Madison McGuire. She would go on to write three more Madison McGuire books in the early '90s, published by Naiad Press, before becoming a freelancer for the Southern Voice and Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
An animal lover, Williams "rescued countless cats and dogs" and was a founding board member of LifeLine Animal Project, a non-profit which manages animal shelters in the Decatur area.
Williams was diagnosed with cancer in 2014. Of the diagnosis she wrote: "There is gold to be mined during the storms in life."