Theresa Schwegel

Theresa Schwegel (born July 20, 1975) is an American writer of crime fiction. She won the Edgar Award for best first novel from the Mystery Writers of America for Officer Down in 2006. In 2008, she received the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award for achievement in writing by an author with ties to Chicago.

Biography

Theresa Schwegel was born in Algonquin, Illinois, to Don and Joyce Schwegel. She attended Loyola University, where she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in communication. After graduating, she took a job at a local television-commercial production company, which sparked her interest in the film industry. She later moved to Orange County, California, to attend the Graduate Film program at Chapman University as a screenwriting major. While in California, she wrote script coverage for a Hollywood production company. She also founded a local theater company in which she produced, directed, and acted in plays by David Mamet, among others.

Schwegel's first novel, Officer Down, began life as a screenplay. Searching for a subject for her Master's Thesis, she struck on a friend's account of an affair with a married police officer. Schwegel was both perplexed and fascinated by her friend's predicament: "I couldn’t reason with her; I couldn’t understand her. But I had to write about her. The mystery: how could someone so smart be so incredibly foolish?" Though Schwegel was primarily interested in exploring why an independent, intelligent woman would carry on an affair with an obviously untrustworthy man, her thesis advisor, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Leonard Schrader, urged her to expand the law-enforcement angle of the story.

Using her friend's experience as a jumping-off point, Schwegel recast the story as a noir thriller, focusing on a hard-drinking beat cop—Samantha Mack—who discovers that her married lover—Detective Mason Imes—is a corrupt cop who is caught up in a drug ring. Developing the police-thriller aspect of the story necessitated heavy research into law enforcement and police culture. "The truth of the matter," Schwegel wrote later, was that "I was not a cop. I did not know any cops. I did not know anything about cops, with the exception of a few vague memories of the TV show “Crime Story.” I had no clue about procedure; I didn’t know the difference between a Sergeant and a Lieutenant." Through the course of rewriting both the screenplay and the novel versions of Officer Down, she immersed herself in the world of law enforcement. After selling the book, she wrote, "My proudest moment since St. Martin’s took on OFFICER DOWN was when my editor informed me that some people at the house asked if I was a cop." Schrader encouraged her to rewrite the story as a novel, and Schwegel warmed to the expanded possibilities the form offered, later explaining, "In screenwriting, you don’t write about the couch unless the hero has a gun tucked between the cushions and his nemesis has just taken a seat... In a novel, I can describe the couch. I can tell you that the hero thinks it’s comfortable. I can tell you the hero’s ex-wife insisted on buying the too-expensive couch and now the bad guy is sitting on it, he thinks of her—the woman who got him into this mess… and on and on. In other words, writing for the screen is an action blueprint; writing a novel is custom-building from the action." In 2008, she received the 21st Century Award for emerging Chicago-area writers, awarded annually by the Chicago Public Library Foundation.

Works

Officer Down

Officer Down is narrated by police officer Samantha Mack. The story opens with Mack picking up a shift after being stood up by her married lover, Detective Mason Imes. Mack works the shift with her old partner, Fred Maloney; the two were formerly lovers, but Maloney is now married. After an awkward re-introduction, Fred takes them to meet with one of his snitches, who gives them a tip on the location of Marco Trovic. Trovic is a pedophile who Fred had arrested a few weeks earlier and who subsequently skipped bail. When Maloney and Mack arrive at the address provided by Fred's snitch, they are ambushed by a gunman, who kills Maloney and shoots Mack, knocking her unconscious. When Mack regains consciousness, she finds herself under the suspicion of an Internal Affairs officer named Alex O'Connor; the only fingerprints found at the scene were hers and Maloney's, which casts doubt on her story. Desperate to clear her name and bring Maloney's killer to justice, Mack launches her own investigation, but is stymied by O'Connor, her own Sergeant—and Imes, who increasingly seems to be more involved in Fred's death than Mack wants to believe. Schwegel developed the story of Officer Down after talking to a friend who had become romantically involved with a married police officer. "What interested me about the situation was that my friend was (is) a strong, rational woman, and he was able to tear her down completely," Schwegel says. "In writing this story, I wanted to understand the mechanics of manipulation. I wanted to know how this man could call my friend a whore and make her believe it." Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker gave the book an "A−", writing that Schwegel "creates a portrait of a family in crisis, and her vivid characterizations — stressed husband, yearning wife, floundering daughter — lift the thriller plot of Person of Interest to literary-novel status." Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Paul Goat Allen wrote, "Aside from the novel's gritty realism and intense emotional intimacy, the numerous thematic subtleties make this blend of police procedural and suspense thriller eminently readable... Person of Interest is an indisputable crime fiction tour de force."

Last Known Address

Detective Sloane Pearson, who previously appeared in Schwegel's Probable Cause, returns as the protagonist of Last Known Address. Sloane has recently been transferred to the Area Five Sex Crimes Division, following a homicide case in which one of her key witnesses was murdered. As one of the few female detectives in Area Five, she has faced great difficulty in winning the respect of her male colleagues, which has only reinforced her tendency to work alone.

As the story opens, Sloane is called to the home of Holly Dutcher, a real estate agent whom Sloane met briefly several weeks before. Dutcher has been raped by an unknown assailant, who dragged her into a vacant building and insisted that she “fight him.” The details match those of another case Sloane has been investigating, and she is convinced that Dutcher's assault is the work of a serial rapist. However, the previous victim, Claire Meyer-Davis, has stopped cooperating with the investigation, and Sloane's superiors are adamant that she close the case and move on. Sloane disregards her orders and continues looking into the case, leaking some details to a reporter at the Chicago Sun Times. Her investigation eventually leads her to the offices of a powerful real estate developer, Maurice Reyes, and her list of suspects broadens to include a host of Chicago's business and political elite.

Interspersed with the story of Sloane's investigation (told in third-person) are a series of first-person accounts from other victims of the same rapist. These women chose not to report their rapes, and are thus unknown to Sloane throughout the course of the main narrative. Their stories offer insight into why many victims of sexual assault choose to remain silent, as well as providing the reader with additional clues as to the identity of the rapist.

The Good Boy

Schwegel's most recent novel, The Good Boy, centers around Chicago K9 Officer Pete Murphy and his eleven-year-old son, Joel. Pete has been assigned to the K9 unit in the wake of a high-profile scandal involving Judge Katherine Crawford. Crawford had received death threats following two murders committed by a drug dealer she had released on bail, and Pete was assigned to protect her. The family of one of the murder victims attempted to sue the judge, and in the resulting media whirlwind, rumors began spreading that Pete and Crawford were having an affair. This led to Pete's dismissal from the protection detail and reassignment to the K9 unit, in addition to creating tension between him and his wife, Sarah. As the story opens, Pete impulsively pulls over car full of teenage gang-bangers, one of whom turns out to be Ja'Kobe White, the brother of one of the victims from the Crawford scandal. Ja'Kobe seizes on the incident to file a police-harassment lawsuit against Pete, which reignites the scandal and draws the ire of Pete's superiors.

Meanwhile, Joel Murphy, Pete's son, is feeling isolated and ignored by his family. His fourteen-year-old sister, McKenna, has become more interested in boys and gossip than spending time with her younger brother. One night, Joel overhears McKenna making plans to go to a party at the home of Zack Fowler, a neighborhood bully who has recently tormented Joel. Fearing for his sister's safety, Joel sneaks out of the house with his father's police dog, Butchie, and follows her to the party. When Butchie smells drugs coming from Fowler's back yard, he slips his leash and attacks one of the partygoers, which leads to the accidental shooting of another. Joel, fearing that the dog will be put to sleep (and that the partygoers will seek revenge), sets off across the city for the courthouse, where he hopes to plead for the dog's life. When Pete learns that his son is missing, he begins to suspect that Ja'Kobe is involved, leading him on an increasingly desperate investigation focused on the loose ends from the Crawford scandal.

Personal life

Theresa Schwegel lives in Chicago, Illinois with her family.