The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives

JONATHAN KELLERMAN

Born in New York City in 1949, Jonathan Kellerman grew up in Los Angeles, receiving a BA in psychology from UCLA and a PhD in psychology from the University of Southern California. He worked his way through school as an editorial cartoonist, a columnist, an editor, and a musician. He went on to become a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine. His first two books were about medicine: Psychological Aspects of Childhood Cancer (1980) and Helping the Fearful Child (1981).

His first mystery, When the Bough Breaks (1985), introduced Alex Delaware and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It also won the Anthony Award at the World Mystery Convention (Bouchercon) and became a New York Times bestseller as well as a television movie.

In addition to the perennially bestselling Delaware series, he has written four novels about a beautiful Los Angeles homicide detective with a complicated past, Petra Connor: Survival of the Fittest (1997), Billy Straight (1998), Twisted (2004), and Obsession (2007); two stand-alone bestsellers with his wife, Faye Kellerman (also a bestselling author and the creator of the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series): The Butcher’s Theater (1988), The Conspiracy Club (2003), and Capital Crimes (2007); and two children’s books: Daddy, Daddy, Can You Touch the Sky? (1994) and Jonathan Kellerman’s ABC of Weird Creatures (1995).

The Kellermans have four children, one of whom, Jesse Kellerman, is also a professional writer of crime fiction. They live in Southern California.