Warren Murphy was born in Jersey City, where he worked as a reporter and editor. After the Korean war, he drifted into politics, "but when everybody I worked for went to jail, I thought God was sending me a message to find a new line of work." The first Destroyer novel followed soon after.

He has been an adjunct professor at Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, and has also run workshops and lectured at many other schools and universities. His hobbies are golf, mathematics, opera and investing. He has served on the board of the Mystery Writers of America, and also has been a member of the Private Eye Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, the American Crime Writers League, and the Screenwriters Guild.

Murphy is also a member of the Adams Roundtable, a New York writers' social group, among whose members are Mary Higgins Clark, Peter Straub, Susan Isaacs, Lawrence Block, Harlan Coben, Judith Kelman, Mickey Friedman, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Justin Scott, Stanley Cohen and Whitley Strieber, and who occasionally produce mystery anthologies. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.