Writing Techniques
Burke's novels are known for their authenticity and often draw on real-world cases and the author's personal and professional experiences.
Burke's Samantha Kincaid series is set in the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office, where Burke worked in the 1990s. In creating NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, Burke drew on her experience growing up in Kansas. Like Burke, Hatcher was raised in Wichita. Hatcher's father was a Wichita police detective who spent his career hunting a serial killer who evaded police for thirty years.
Burke's first novel, Judgment Calls, is loosely based on the case of Keith Hunter Jesperson, a serial killer known as the "Happy Face Killer" for the smiley faces he drew on his many letters to the media. Angel's Tip was loosely based on the murders of Imette St. Guillen and Jennifer Moore.
In Dead Connection, Ellie Hatcher tracks a serial killer who uses an online dating service to locate his victims. Burke has said that the plot was inspired by her worst nightmares while briefly enrolled on Match.com. Burke subsequently dedicated the book to her husband, writing, "For Sean, I can't believe I found you on a computer."
Read more about this topic: Alafair Burke
Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or techniques:
“All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)