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 a obviously untrustworthy man, her thesis advisor, Academy Award-winning 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," she 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."

Schwegel shopped the screenplay version of Officer Down to Hollywood, but quickly became disillusioned. "In my experience, Hollywood ranks spec scripts a few points lower than scratch paper. Even if you know someone who knows someone (which I did), the odds don’t fall in your favor." 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."

Officer Down was published by St. Martin's Press in 2005, and won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 2006. Following the success of her debut, Schwegel has gone on to write a series of police thrillers, all set in the Chicago area and characterized by a gritty, unflinching sensibility. Of her predilection for "dark" stories, Schwegel has said, "I've always been a fan of noir, even in film school--the blacker the better for me. I just really am more interested in the underbelly, the underside of things." In 2008, she received the 21st Century Award for emerging Chicago-area writers, awarded annually by the Chicago Public Library Foundation.

In 2008, Schwegel relocated to Chicago. In addition to bringing her closer to her family (Algonquin is a short drive from Chicago), the move also served a practical purpose: "When I lived in California I’d return to Chicago and take photos so I could keep the images fresh," she later recalled. "It’s easier now that I’m in the city--all I have to do is look out the window."

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."

Probable Cause

Person of Interest

Person of Interest garnered some of Schwegel's strongest reviews to date. New York Times critic Janet Maslin praised it as a "a smart, propulsive, tightrope-walking mystery novel," noting that "Person of Interest calls for a delicate balancing act from Ms. Schwegel. She switches perspectives gracefully in order to convey the anger and estrangement of each member of the McHugh family. And she weaves a terrifically vigorous plot out of how their misapprehensions of one another lead them into danger." 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

Theresa Schwegel lives in the Ukrainian Village section of Chicago. She is engaged to be married to Kevin Lambert. Her cousin, Djay Brawner, is a music video director in Los Angeles, California.