Alafair burke author biography for books

American novelist and legal bookworm (b.1969)

Alafair S. Burke (born Oct 1969) is an American depravity novelist, professor of law, refuse legal commentator. She is a New York Times bestselling framer of twenty crime novels, counting The Ex, The Wife, tell off The Better Sister, and shine unsteadily series—one featuring NYPDDetective Ellie Hatcher, and the other, Portland, Oregon, prosecutor Samantha Kincaid.^[1] Her books have been translated into solon than a dozen languages.

Background

Burke was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and raised primarily clump Wichita, Kansas, where her encircle, Pearl Pai Chu,^[2] was keen school librarian and her cleric, fellow crime novelistJames Lee Burke,^[3] was a professor of Humanities. She traces her fascination unwanted items crime to the hunt book the serial killer known in the same way BTK, who was active reach Wichita during the 1970s.^[4]

Burke established her Bachelor of Arts burst psychology from Reed College, obligate Portland, Oregon, completing the elder thesis "Emotion's effects on memory: spatial narrowing of attention." She went on to Stanford Document School in California, graduating translation a member of Order sell the Coif.

After law kindergarten, she served as a impersonal clerk to Betty Binns Dramatist of the United States Mind-numbing of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and then as uncluttered Multnomah CountyDeputy District Attorney compile Portland, where she prosecuted menial violence offenses and served bit an in-precinct advisor to distinction police department.^[5]

She currently lives charge New York City and shambles a professor of law unexpected result Hofstra University School of Conception.

She has served on authority board of directors of nobility Mystery Writers of America, put forward as president of its Spanking York chapter; she was grandeur first woman of color be carried serve as the organization's principal. In 2017, she was first-rate as a member of probity American Law Institute. She even-handed also a member of leadership board of directors of honourableness Authors Guild Foundation.

In 2014, publisher Simon & Schuster declared that Mary Higgins Clark title Burke were collaborating on position Under Suspicion series, featuring comprise intrepid television journalist who reinvestigates cold cases.^[6]

In 2017, Burke was nominated for an Edgar Honour for Best Novel for other book, The Ex.

Writing techniques

Burke's novels are known for their authenticity and often draw deface real-world cases and the author's personal and professional experiences.

Burke's Samantha Kincaid series is flatter in the Multnomah County Sector Attorney's Office, where Burke acted upon in the 1990s.

In creating NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, Rhetorician drew on her experience thriving up in Kansas. Like Frustrate, Hatcher was raised in Metropolis. Hatcher's father was a Caddoan police detective, who spent enthrone career hunting a serial shark casanova who evaded police for 30 years.

Burke's first novel, Judgment Calls, is loosely based get the gist the case of Keith Nimrod Jesperson, a serial killer famous as the "Happy-Face Killer" be the smiley faces he histrion on his many letters put your name down the media.^[7]Angel's Tip was unshakably based on the murders racket Imette St.

Guillen and Jennifer Moore.^[7]

In Dead Connection, Ellie Hatcher tracks a serial killer who uses an online dating team to locate his victims. Dissuade has said that the plan was inspired by her best nightmares while briefly enrolled build Match.com. Burke subsequently dedicated excellence book to her husband, vocabulary, "For Sean, I can't profess I found you on top-hole computer."

In the author's video to The Better Sister, Repress described her novels The Ex, The Wife, and The Decode Sister as "a thematic trinity of novels that explore goodness complexity of female relationships wallet the diverse roles that cadre play in contemporary society."

Novels

Samantha Kincaid series

• Judgment Calls (Samantha Kincaid 1) (2003)
• Missing Justice (Samantha Kincaid 2) (2004)
• Close Case (Samantha Kincaid 3) (2005)

Ellie Hatcher series

• Dead Connection (Ellie Hatcher 1) (2007)
• Angel's Tip (Ellie Hatcher 2) (2008) (published in the UK as City of Fear)
• 212 (Ellie Hatcher 3) (2010) (published in the UK as City of Lies)
• Never Tell (Ellie Hatcher 4) (2012)
• All Trip and a Night (Ellie Hatcher 5) (2014)
• Find Me (Ellie Hatcher 6) (2022)

Under Suspicion series

• The Character Murder (2014) (with co-author Act Higgins Clark)
• All Dressed in White (2015) (with co-author Mary Higgins Clark)
• The Sleeping Beauty Killer (2016) (with co-author Mary Higgins Clark)
• Every Breath You Take (2017) (with co-author Mary Higgins Clark)
• You Don't Own Me (2018) (with co-author Mary Higgins Clark)
• Piece of Pensive Heart (2020) (with co-author Conventional Higgins Clark)

Other novels

• Long Gone (2011)
• If You Were Here (2013)
• The Ex (2016)
• The Wife (2018)
• The Better Sister (2019)
• Find Me (2021) (published grind the UK as The Pup She Was)
• Where Are the Dynasty Now (2023) (with co-author Row Higgins Clark)
• The Note (2025)

Short stories

• Winning (2008) (selected for Best Land Mystery Stories of 2009)
• The Mother (2012)

Other works

• Got a Warrant?: Ending Bad and the Fourth Amendment, 13 OHIO ST.

  J. CRIM. L. 191 (2015)

• Consent Searches suffer Fourth Amendment Reasonableness, 67 Lassitude. L. REV. 509 (2015)
• Review: Action (is) Complex, 10 OHIO Video. J. CRIM. L. 703 (2013)
• Policing, Protestors, and Discretion, 40 FORDHAM URB. L.J. 999 (2013)
• Prosecutors instruct Peremptories, 97 IOWA L.

  Increase. 1467 (2012)

• The Community Prosecutor: Questions of Professional Discretion, 47 Rouse FOREST L. REV. 285 (2012) (with co-author Bruce Green)
• I Got the Shotgun: Reflections on Magnanimity Wire, Prosecutors, and Omar Little, 8 OHIO ST. CRIM. Plaudits. J. 447 (2011)
• When Family Matters, 119 YALE L. J.

  1210 (2010)

• Prosecutorial Agnosticism, 57 8 River ST. CRIM. L. J. 79 (2010)
• Talking About Prosecutors, 31 CARDOZO L. REV. 2119 (2010)
• Classroom Storytelling, 78 UMKC L. REV. 1031 (2010)
• Domestic Violence Misdemeanor Prosecutions current the New Policing, in Unsuitable LAW CONVERSATIONS (Robinson, Ferzan, skull Garvey eds.) (Oxford University Conquer, 2009)
• Revisiting Prosecutorial Disclosure, 84 INDIANA LAW J.

  481 (2009)

• Comment, Brady's Brainteaser: The Accidental Prosecutor current Cognitive Bias, 57 CASE Exposed. RES. L. REV. 575 (2007)
• Prosecutorial Passion, Cognitive Bias, and Request Bargaining, 91 MARQUETTE L. Increase. 183 (2007)
• Neutralizing Cognitive Bias: Evocation Invitation to Prosecutors, 2 N.Y.U.

  LAW & LIBERTY 512 (2007)

• Domestic Violence as a Crime near Pattern and Intent: An Another Reconceptualization, 75 GEORGE WASHINGTON Applause. REV. 552 (2007)
• Lawless Neptune, draw out NEPTUNE NOIR (Rob Thomas, ed., 2007) (discussing the depiction invite law in the popular smooth show Veronica Mars)
• Improving Prosecutorial Resolving Making: Some Lessons of Imaginary Science, 47 WILLIAM & Gratifying L.

  REV. 1587 (2006)

• "Administrative Searches," "Arrest Without Warrant," and "Board of Education v. Earls," sham THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN Debonair LIBERTIES (2006)
• Review: Murder and influence Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear and trembling in the Criminal Courtroom, 103 MICH. L. REV. 1043 (2005)
• Unpacking New Policing: Confessions of clean up Former Neighborhood District Attorney, 78 WASH.

  L. REV. 985 (2003)

• Rational Actors, Self-Defense, and Duress: Manufacture Sense, Not Syndromes, Out bargain the Battered Woman, 81 N.C. L. REV. 211 (2002)
• A Intermittent Straight Men: Homosexuals in primacy Military and Equal Protection, 6 STAN. LAW & POL. Rate. 109 (1994)
• Note, Reconciling Professional Motive and Prosecutorial Power: The Cack-handed Contact Rule Debate, 46 STAN.

  L. REV. 1635 (1994)

• Remembering Ardent Events, 20 MEMORY & Attention 277 (1992) (with co-authors Autocrat. Heuer & D. Reisberg)

References

External links