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Alafair S. Burke is an American crime novelist, professor of law, and legal commentator. She is the author of two series of crime novels-one featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher; the other, Portland, Oregon, prosecutor Samantha Kincaid.
A former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair Burke now teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School. The daughter of acclaimed crime writer James Lee Burke, she is a graduate of Stanford Law School and currently serves as a legal and trial commentator for radio and television programs, including for Court TV.
She has served on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and as President of its New York chapter.
Her notable works include: Judgment Calls (2003), Missing Justice (2004), Dead Connection (2007), Long Gone (2011), If You Were Here (2013) and All Day and a Night (2014). Her short story Winning was selected for the Best American Mystery Stories of 2009. In 2014, publisher Simon & Schuster announced that Mary Higgins Clark and Burke were collaborating on a novel called The Cinderella Murder.
She lives in New York City with her husband, Sean.
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Would you say you're following in the footsteps of
your father, James Lee Burke?
Actually, when it
comes to mysteries, you could say my father followed in my
footsteps. Many people don't know that he published several works
before turning to crime fiction with The Neon Rain, so no
one thought of my father as a mystery writer during my formative
years. I, however, was a huge fan of the genre. I plowed through
the entire Encyclopedia Brown series and used to steal time with
my dad's manual Royal typewriter to hammer out page turners like
"Murder at the Roller Disco." So, for the record, I beat my dad to
the mystery punch.
Clearly, though,
he's been a huge influence on me. What I really think I inherited
from my family more than any particular writing style (or talent
for that matter) is a narrative tradition. The Burkes are people
who tell stories, and I grew up watching my father work a
full-time job and then come home and write every single day ...
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