Tess Gerritsen

Author Interview: Tess Gerritsen

New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen writes gripping stories with scalpel-sharp prose. Her characters linger in the reader’s mind long after the story ends and plots snap close with unexpected twists.

Tess Gerritsen uses everything she’s learned in life—a trained physician, daughter of a San Diego restaurateur, anthropologist, wife and mother—to weave believability and freshness into her fiction. Here are three examples of opening lines she’s used to entice fans to keep turning pages:

“They looked like the perfect family.” The Mephisto Club (Ballantine Books, 2006)

“A scalpel is a beautiful thing.” Life Support (Pocket Books, 1997)

“My name is Mila, and this is my journey.” Vanished (Ballantine Books, 2005)

Such enticements prompted readers to buy more than twenty million books in thirty-seven languages. Tess continues to top the bestseller charts in the U.S. and abroad. Word of caution: Never pick up one of her novels unless you’re prepared to lose sleep.

Tess joins us today to discuss her next novel, Ice Cold (UK title: The Killing Place), to be released in July and a new TNT television show Rizzoli and Isles debuting this summer. The television whodunit is based upon Tess’s novel series about two Boston crime fighters — Rizzoli, a homicide detective, and Maura Isles, a medical examiner. More information about Tess can be found at her website or her blog. In addition, she contributes several Tuesdays each month to the well-visited blog Murderati which boasts of “Mysteries, Murder and Marketing.”

MARK:  Tess, tell us about your latest novel, a Rizzoli and Isles thriller titled Ice Cold? 

TESS:  Maura Isles travels to Wyoming for a medical conference and decides to join a group of friends on a spur-of-the moment ski trip.  When their GPS sends them up a mountain road, their vehicle gets stranded in a blizzard.  The group stumbles on foot into the village of Kingdom Come, where they find empty houses and meals still sitting on tables.  All the residents have vanished.  What disaster occurred in this remote settlement, and where did everyone go?  Every attempt to escape the village ends in catastrophe, and soon Maura is fighting for her life.  Meanwhile, Jane Rizzoli flies to Wyoming to find her missing friend ... and discovers the pretty shocking secret of what really happened in Kingdom Come.

MARK:  Your novel will be released in the U.S. under the name Ice Cold, while the same novel will be released in the U.K under the name of The Killing Place? How does this work? Why the name change? And, will both titles be released simultaneously?

TESS:  My books are published by two different publishers in those markets, Ballantine in the US and Transworld UK, and they want to tailor the books to their own readership.  They did not agree on the title, so they each decided to use the title they thought would sell best in their own countries.  It gets confusing, I agree, but I think they understand their own markets.  Both titles will be released very close to each other this summer, so there shouldn't be too much competition between the publications.

MARK: Give us a little history about your Rizzoli and Isles characters for the benefit of some who may not yet have had the pleasure of meeting these Boston crime solvers. Who are they? What do they do? And how did they become a team?

TESS: Jane Rizzoli first appeared in THE SURGEON, where she was only a secondary — brash but brilliant homicide detective in Boston.  I had every intention of killing her off in that book, but somehow she fought back against her creator and managed to survive.  By the end of that book, I was so intrigued by this woman, who had the heart of a lion while still being as vulnerable as any woman, and I wanted to know what happened next in her life.  So I wrote THE APPRENTICE.  Soon Jane was as real to me as any person, and I couldn't stop writing about her life, her family, and the challenges she faced as a cop.

Maura Isles started off as a secondary character as well, a medical examiner who first appeared in THE APPRENTICE.  From the moment she appeared on the page, I was fascinated by her.  Who was this mysterious Goth-type character whom everyone called "Queen of the Dead'?  Why did she seem so secretive, so aloof?  What did she hide?  So I featured her in THE SINNER, the third book in the Rizzoli series, and Maura's life came into focus.  Suddenly I realized I had a two-heroine series, featuring two women who had little in common except their jobs, but whose lives end up intertwined in ways I could never have predicted.  They've gone from being colleagues to being — friends with issues and conflicts, because they both see the world so differently.