Alafair Burke

Alafair Burke prosecuted domestic violence cases as a deputy district attorney in Multnomah County, Oregon, then moved into teaching, and has taught criminal law and procedure at Hofstra University School of Law ever since. Born in Fort Lauderdale in October 1969 and raised mostly in Wichita, Kansas, she studied psychology at Reed College and took her law degree at Stanford. Two series carry her name, one following the Portland prosecutor Samantha Kincaid and the other the NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher, alongside seven books co-written with Mary Higgins Clark for the Under Suspicion series. Find Me, published in January 2022, is the sixth Hatcher book but reads as a standalone: a woman who has lived under a borrowed name since waking from a crash with no memory disappears, and her friend the lawyer Lindsay Kelly calls Hatcher in. Her father is the novelist James Lee Burke. She has served as president of Mystery Writers of America, the first woman of colour to hold that office.