Joseph Teller is a pen name of Joseph Teller Klempner, and he is also published as Joseph T. Klempner

Joseph Teller was born and raised in New York City. He graduated in 1961 from the College of Wooster in Ohio and from the University of Michigan Law School in 1964. He returned to New York City, where he was admitted to the bar in 1965, but spent three years as an agent with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (the precursor of the Drug Enforcement Administration), doing undercover work. For the next 35 years, he worked as a criminal defense attorney, representing murderers, drug dealers, thieves and at least one serial killer. When New York State restored the death penalty in the nineties, Teller was one of a select group of lawyers given special training to represent capital defendants, which he did on several occasions, including winning an acquittal for a man accused of committing a double murder.

Not too long ago, Teller decided to "run from the law," and began writing fiction. He lives and writes in rural upstate New York with his wife, Sandy, an antiques dealer.