Tess Gerritsen

Author of the popular "Cops and Docs" crime series featuring Dr Maura Isles and Boston Detective Jane Rizzolli...

Born in 1953 and raised in San Diego, Tess Gerritsen trained as a doctor at the University of California, San Francisco, and was awarded her M.D. in 1979. While on maternity leave from her job as a physician, she began writing and sent a short story into a competition in a magazine in Honolulu (where she was then living). She won first prize which spurred her on in her writing.

Her first novel, Call After Midnight was published in 1987 and was followed by eight more romantic crime novels. However, it was a chance dinner conversation that inspired Tess to write her first medical thriller. The man sitting beside her at the restaurant was an ex-cop who ran a security service protecting American businessmen in Russia. On his last trip abroad, Moscow cops had told him that Russian orphans were vanishing from the streets. They believed the children were being kidnaped by the Russian mafia and shipped abroad as organ donors. The story so horrified Tess that she immediately called her brother-in-law, a reporter for Newsweek, suggesting he investigate. Weeks later, Tess was still unable to forget those missing Russian orphans. They became the inspiration for the plot of her first medical thriller, Harvest. This was in 1996 and was followed by three more medical thrillers before the first of the Isles/Rizzoli series, The Surgeon, in 2001. She has treated us to a new novel every year ever since.

Fact file

Name: Tess Gerritsen

Date of birth: 1953

Place of birth: San Diego

Current Home: Maine

Education: University of California, San Francisco

Similar Authors: Robin Cook, Mo Hayder, Donald James