Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen is an American author and physician, born in San Diego in 1953, best known for medical thrillers that fuse forensic pathology with crime fiction. Trained and practicing as a doctor before turning to writing, she built her reputation on close technical detail, including in novels like Gravity (1999), a near-future thriller about a mysterious illness contracted aboard a space station. She is best known for the long-running Rizzoli & Isles series, following homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and a medical examiner, which began with The Surgeon (2001) and later inspired a television adaptation. Several entries in the series, including The Mephisto Club (2006) and The Bone Garden (2007), incorporate supernatural or historical elements alongside their forensic procedure, and The Shape of Night (2019) is a full ghost story. Tess is itself a professional pen name adopted early in her career, and her fiction is distinguished by its authoritative medical detail.