Harvest was Gerritsen's first hardcover novel, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list at number thirteen. He told her young orphans were vanishing from Moscow streets, and police believed the kidnapped children were being shipped abroad as organ donors. The plot was inspired by a conversation with a retired homicide detective who had recently traveled in Russia. In 1996, Gerritsen wrote Harvest, her first medical thriller. Gerritsen subsequently wrote eight romantic thrillers for Harlequin Intrigue and Harper Paperbacks. After two unpublished 'practice novels', Call After Midnight was bought by publisher Harlequin Intrigue in 1986 and published a year later.

Inspired by the romance novels she enjoyed reading while working as a doctor, Gerritsen's first novels were romantic thrillers. Gerritsen claimed the story allowed her to deal with her own childhood turmoil, including the repeated suicide attempts of her mother. The story focused on a young male reflecting on a difficult relationship with his mother. Her story, 'On Choosing the Right Crack Seed', won first prize and she received $500. While on maternity leave, she submitted a short story to a statewide fiction contest in the magazine Honolulu. She received her medical degree in 1979 and started work as a physician in Honolulu, Hawaii. She went on to study medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1975, Gerritsen graduated from Stanford University with a BA in anthropology, intrigued by the ranges of human behavior. Although she longed to be a writer, her family had reservations about the sustainability of a writing career, prompting Gerritsen to choose a career in medicine. Her first name is Terry she decided to feminize it when she was a writer of romance novels. While growing up in San Diego, California, Gerritsen often dreamt of writing her own Nancy Drew novels. Tess Gerritsen is the child of a Chinese immigrant and a Chinese-American seafood chef. Tess Gerritsen (born Terry Tom J) is the pseudonym of Terry Gerritsen, an American novelist and retired general physician. Stanford University, University of California, San Francisco

The surgeon by tess gerritsen