I got my first typewriter at age 7. (That’s me in the bow-tie, pointing to the clanky typing machine.) I’ve been writing ever since.

I spent 25 years as a newspaper editor and writer, covering everything from football games to Liberace concerts to Presidential visits. (Plus the occasional robbery and fire.) I eventually landed as a senior financial editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, right at the time business coverage changed from suck-up profiles of advertisers to actual news: the multibillion-dollar passion plays of corporate raiding, bank collapses and Wall Street felonies. I cherished that noble profession, newspapering, and always will; it’s the lifeblood of our democracy. But the turn of the millennium seemed a natural time to scratch the other itch I’ve had since childhood: writing thriller novels. So I left my guaranteed newspaper paycheck for the heady world of crime fiction.

Whereupon I launched a series.

Torn Apart is the newest of my novels, the third in the Emily Thompson and Martin Benedetti cops-vs.-killers series. It came out in July 2010 from Kensington Publishing, and early this year was named Best Thriller of 2010 by Suspense Magazine, and short-listed for the Thriller Award for Best Paperback Novel of 2010. The Thrillers are the industry equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes and/or Academy Awards, so to win it would be just . . . well, words fail me, that’s how wonderful it would be. I’ll find out July 9 in New York City whether I did. You’ll hear the shrieking . . .

Awards are wonderful things; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But even more satisfying was the process of writing these books. Particularly Torn Apart, which made my heart pound in my ears as I raced through every chapter. (That’s a good sign that you might like it too.) It joins my 2006 debut novel Blown Away—named the nation’s Best First Mystery of that year by the prestigious RT Book Reviews—and Cut to the Bone in gathering accolades from such New York Times-bestselling authors as Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Douglas Preston, Erica Spindler, John J. Nance, Gayle Lynds, Alex Kava and John Lutz, with one critic enthusiastically writing, “Cross James Patterson with Joseph Wambaugh, and you get Shane Gericke.” I don’t believe a word of this lavish praise, but my mom likes it, so there you go.

My books have been translated into German, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Slovakian and Turkish, the covers of which you can see on my International Editions page. It’s fun to see how each country’s art director interpreted the same story for his or her audience, from a butcher knife through the eye of a teddy bear to the eerily discombobulated face of a woman to a single bloody leaf.

I live in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, where the series is set, with my wife of 32 years, Jerrle, who enthusiastically supports my madcap adventures in Thrillerland. When I’m not blowing up stuff in novels, I help run the ThrillerFest literary conference in New York City and its AgentFest author-agent match program. (And am past chairman of both.) I’m an original member of International Thriller Writers, and a member of Mystery Writers of America and The Society of Midland Authors.

Sadly, I no longer have the typewriter in that photo from 1963. But I do still have my trusty Underwood, the twenty-pound iron beast that typed out many a class assignment in high school. (Plus the aforementioned sports stories.) It sits next to the MacBook Pro laptop I use these days. Proving that while technology changes, typing doesn’t—you still put your index fingers on the F and the J. Because if you don’t, you get this:

Yl;jsmfd gpt dyp[[omh nu yp bodoy/

Which means,