Allen Wyler

Brought up in Seattle, Allen Wyler’s parents died early, leaving him to support himself through college in a variety of ways—including serving as a drive-in cook and playing drums as a professional musician in various blues and jazz groups.   Medicine was his chosen discipline and he went on to have a distinguished career in his specialty, neurosurgery, which he determined very early on in his studies. Serving on the faculties of the University of Washington and the University of Tennessee, he earned an international reputation for pioneering surgical techniques to record brain activity. In 1992, he was recruited by the prestigious Swedish Medical Centre to develop a neuroscience institute. Ten years later, he left active practice to become the medical director for a start-up, med-tech company, and now chairs the Institutional Review Board of a major medical center in the Pacific Northwest.   In the early 1970s, Wyler developed a love of reading thrillers, and later decided to leverage his medical knowledge by writing himself. After the publication of his first two medical thrillers, Deadly Errors, and Dead Head, he retired from medicine to devote more time to his writing. He has also served as vice president of the International Thriller Writers organization for several years.   He and his wife, Lily, divide their time between Seattle and the San Juan Islands, and he continues to develop new plots from real-life situations met during his career.