Before becoming a best-selling author, TESS GERRITSEN was a physician. On maternity leave, she began to write fiction and never stopped. Over the past 30 years, she has written dozens of thrillers, including the novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles that inspired the TNT television series Rizzoli & Isles.

A typical admiring review of one of her books reads: “A top- grade thriller. . .Sharp characters stitch your eye to the page. An all-nighter.” Gerritsen will tell us about where her ideas come from, about how she constructs her plots, and about how to commit the perfect literary murder.