Brian Lutterman

Brian Lutterman was born and raised on a farm in southwestern Minnesota, and attended high school in the Twin Cities. He attended the University of Minnesota, graduating with a degree in political science, and graduated from law school at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Brian was a trial lawyer in Chicago and Minneapolis, and then traveled widely as a corporate attorney in the travel industry. He gave up practicing law due to health issues, and concentrated on helping to raise his two children.After leaving the practice of law, Brian realized that the part of the job he missed most was writing. That’s when he turned to writing fiction, motivated by a longtime fondness for mysteries. His first novel, Bound to Die, won the National Mystery Contest sponsored by Salvo Press, which then published the book in 2002. In 2003, Bound to Die was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award, finishing runner-up to John Sandford’s Mortal Prey. His second thriller, Poised to Kill, was released by Salvo Press in 2004, and was described by the Midwest Book Review as “. . .a masterfully woven tale of tycoons and terrorists. . .” Both mysteries are set in the corporate world, a setting Brian describes as “…filled with outsized conflicts and larger-than-life characters.”In 2014, after a ten-year, health-related hiatus from writing, Brian began a new mystery-thriller series featuring paraplegic attorney Pen Wilkinson, described by the St. Paul Pioneer Press as “. . . one of the most intriguing new characters on the Minnesota crime scene.” The first book in the series, Downfall, embroils Pen in a sophisticated, brutal corporate sabotage plot. The next book, Windfall, finds Pen prosecuting a corrupt Congressman, while fighting unknown forces wielding a terrifying form of coercion. I Love a Mystery lauded Windfall as “. . . replete with suspense made even more dramatic by the protagonist being confined to a wheelchair.” The series’ third book, Freefall, finds Pen racing against time to prevent a worldwide cyber disaster as she searches for her missing nephew, a computer prodigy. In Nightfall, she investigates the murder of a candidate for governor of Minnesota, discovering a secret plan to incite racial violence. In Deadfall, Pen goes undercover to investigate murder and espionage at a defense contractor.Brian lives with his family in the Twin Cities.