Alafair S. Burke (born October 1969 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida), is an American author, mainly known for writing crime fiction, as well as a law professor, legal commenter and former deputy district attorney. She's perhaps best known for writing bestselling standalone novels The Ex, The Wife and The Better Sister, as well the Ellie Hatcher series and Samantha Kincaid series. She's also known for co-authoring the Under Suspicion series with Mary Higgins Clark. Burke is the daughter of crime novelist James Lee Burke and school librarian Pearl Pai Chu. She currently serves as president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Works by Alafair Burke with their own pages:
- Under Suspicion (2014 – 2020) – co-written with Mary Higgins Clarknote
- The Cinderella Murder (2014)
- All Dressed in White (2015)
- The Sleeping Beauty Killer (2016)
- Every Breath You Take (2017)
- You Don't Own Me (2018)
- Piece of My Heart (2020)
- It Had To Be You (2024)
Other works include:
Samantha Kincaid series
- Judgement Calls (2003)
- Missing Justice (2004)
- Close Case (2005)
Ellie Hatcher series
- Dead Connection (2007)
- Angel's Tip (2008)
- 212 (2010)
- Never Tell (2012)
- All Day and a Night (2014)
Standalone novels
- Long Gone (2011)
- If You Were Here (2013)
- The Ex (2016)
- The Wife (2018)
- The Better Sister (2019)
- Find Me (2021)note
- Where Are the Children Now? (2023) — co-authored with Mary Higgins Clark; a sequel to Higgins Clark's 1975 novel Where Are the Children?.
Tropes associated with the author's works include:
- Inspiration for the Work:
- Burke stated her debut novel, Judgement Calls, was loosely based on the crimes of serial killer Keith Hunter Jeperson, also known as the Happy-Face Killer.
- The plot of Angel's Tip was loosely based on the 2006 murders of Jennifer Moore and Imette St Guillen, who were both abducted and murdered after leaving nightclubs, sparking criticism and legislation change around club security. Burke also drew inspiration from her own experiences clubbing and trying to find a ride home after a night of drinking in her younger years, stating she felt she and her friends "got lucky" nothing sinister happened.
- Dead Connection was inspired by Burke's experience on Match.com and imagining worst-case scenarios for internet dating (although Burke herself met her future husband online, so her personal experience was a positive one).
- Market-Based Title: In the UK, some of Burke's books have been published with Completely Different Titles. This includes Angel's Tip being published as City of Fear, 212 being published as City of Lies and Find Me being published as The Girl She Was.
- Write What You Know:
- Samantha Kincaid is a prosecutor working for the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office, where Burke worked in the 1990s.
- Detective Ellie Hatcher grew up in Wichita, Kansas, which is where Burke was raised. Ellie's father was also a detective who spent his entire career trying to hunt down a serial killer who avoided arrest for three decades. When Burke was growing up, she often heard reports about the evasive BTK killer, Dennis Rader, who murdered people in Kansas in the 1970s and wasn’t caught until 2005.
