Patricia Rockwell

Patricia Rockwell is the author of two mystery series. Her acoustic mysteries feature a Psychology professor and acoustics expert Pamela Barnes who solves crimes using her knowledge of sound.
Her new series, Essie Cobb senior sleuth, features a 90-year-old assisted living facility resident who solves mysteries.

Patricia Rockwell has spent most of her life teaching. From small liberal arts colleges to large regional research universities-and even a brief stint in a high school, her background in education is extensive. She has taught virtually everything related to Communication-from a fine arts speech-theatre orientation to more recently a social science research approach. Her Bachelors' and Masters' degrees are from the University of Nebraska in Speech and her Ph.D. is from the University of Arizona in Communication. She was on the faculty at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for thirteen years, retiring in 2007. Her publications are extensive, with over 20 peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, several textbooks, and a research book on her major interest area of sarcasm, published by Edwin Mellen Press. In addition to publications, she has presented numerous papers at academic conferences and served for eight years as Editor of the Louisiana Communication Journal. Her research focuses primarily on several areas of communication: deception, sarcasm, and vocal cues. Dr. Rockwell is presently living in Aurora, Illinois, with her husband Milt, also a retired educator. The couple have two adult children, Alex and Cecilia. SOUNDS OF MURDER is her first novel.