ALAFAIR BURKE'S LONG GONE GIFT PACKAGE GIVEAWAY

 GIVEAWAY ENDED
LONG GONE

AND 
An Alafair Burke Gift Package

BY ALAFAIR BURKE

ABOUT LONG GONE:

What if everything you thought you knew turned out to be a lie?

After a layoff and months of struggling, Alice Humphrey finally lands her dream job managing a new art gallery in Manhattan's trendy Meatpacking District. According to Drew Campbell, the well-heeled corporate representative who hires her, the gallery is a passion project for its anonymous, wealthy, and eccentric owner. Her friends think it sounds too good to be true, but Alice sees an opportunity to make a name for herself beyond the shadow of her famous father, an award-winning and controversial filmmaker.

Everything is perfect until the morning Alice arrives at work to find the gallery gone—the space stripped bare as if it had never been there—and Drew Campbell's dead body on the floor. Overnight, Alice's dream job has vanished, and she finds herself at the center of a police investigation, with the evidence mounting against her. The phone number Drew gave her links back to a disposable phone. The artist whose work she displayed doesn't seem to exist. And the dead man she claims is Drew has been identified as someone else.

When police discover ties between the gallery and a missing girl, Alice knows she's been set up. Now she has to prove it—a dangerous search for answers that will entangle her in a dark, high-tech criminal conspiracy and force her to unearth long-hidden secrets involving her own family . . . secrets that could cost Alice her life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alafair Burke is the author of what the Sun-Sentinel has hailed as "two powerhouse series" featuring NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher and Portland Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid. Alafair's novels grow out of her love for writing, her experience as a prosecutor in America's police precincts and criminal courtrooms, and her ability to create strong, believable, and eminently likable female characters. According to Entertainment Weekly, Alafair "is a terrific web spinner" who "knows when and how to drop clues to keep readers at her mercy."

Her most recent novel, Angel's Tip, has been praised by Faye Kellerman as "a riveting read that snaps with the beat of New York. Be prepared for a knuckle-biting journey that'll keep you turning pages until the very end." Tami Hoag says, "Alafair Burke has created a winning heroine in Ellie Hatcher, someone to root for not only in this book, but I hope in many more tales as yet untold." According to Sandra Brown, "Alafair Burke is one of those rare writers whose books are both scary and cerebral. Complex plotting, multi-layered characters, a creepy serial killer — in Angel's Tip, Burke has once again proven herself a terrific storyteller."

A Fascination with Crime

Alafair's professional life stems from a long fascination with all things crime-related: the horrible acts of which human beings are capable, the strategies used to solve and prosecute crimes, and the punishments doled out upon the convicted.

Alafair's immersion into those questions began in childhood when her parents moved the family in the late 1970s from the chaos of a changing southern Florida to a supposedly quiet and provincial neighborhood in Wichita, Kansas. The moving boxes had just been unpacked when Wichita police announced a connection among seven unsolved murders of women and even children. The man who claimed responsibility called himself BTK, a gruesome acronym, short for "Bind, Torture, Kill." The Burke's new home fell squarely within the serial killer's stalking territory. Like other children in Wichita in that era, Alafair learned to check the phone lines to be sure they weren't cut, to keep the basement door locked at all times, and to barricade herself in the bathroom with the phone if she had to call 911.

In a world where the killer could be anyone, and where an arrest appeared hopeless, Alafair found comfort in crime fiction. Her mother, Pearl, was a school librarian and would take her each week to the public library for a new stack of books. She moved from the Encyclopedia Brown series to Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie and eventually to Sue Grafton. In the books, as opposed to Wichita, smart sleuthing always paid off, and order was always restored.

Meanwhile, she read everything she could find about the unsolved murders, believing (ridiculously, she now realizes) that she could break the case if she only had access to all of the evidence. Unfortunately, police would not make an arrest for another thirty years. 

The Road to the Courtroom

Alafair attended Reed College, where she fell in love with Portland, Oregon. Considered rebelious and off the beaten path in Wichita, she was perceived quite differently at the college whose unofficial slogan was "Atheism, Communism, Free Love." Fellow dormies (lovingly) called her Nancy Reagan and The Cheerleader. In Judgment Calls, Alafair takes a (loving) jab at Reed when Samantha Kincaid notes that the locals refer to Reed as "that hippie school."

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Reed, Alafair went to the decidedly less hippy-ish Stanford Law School. Although she momentarily flirted with the idea of becoming an entertainment lawyer so she could make deals at the Palm and get tickets to the Oscars, she eventually realized she had watched Robert Altman's The Player one too many times, and instead decided to pursue criminal law after spending a semester in an externship with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Portland. She graduated from Stanford with distinction, earning admission into the Order of the Coif, and then accepted a coveted judicial clerkship with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before turning to an appointment as a Deputy District Attorney in Portland.

As a prosecutor, Alafair worked primarily in two positions, as a trial lawyer prosecuting domestic violence offenses and as a liaison to the police department, where she worked directly out of the police precinct, trained officers in search and seizure, and wore a Kevlar vest for night-shift ride-alongs. 

The Books

After five years of working at the District Attorney's Office, Alafair was ready to marry her love of crime fiction with the stories and knowledge she had gathered as a prosecutor. By then, she could imagine the kinds of settings, characters, and dialogue that should color a series set in the Portland prosecutor's office. She also had a plot, inspired by two actual cases that arose while she was in the office.

That first novel, Judgment Calls, introduced readers to feisty Portland prosecutor Samantha Kincaid. Judgment Calls immediately made Alafair a "comer and a keeper" (Chicago Tribune) and "the real deal (January Magazine). The novel was praised by the Washington Post as "first-rate, suspenseful entertainment" and by the Houston Chronicle as a "grabber of a first novel." Some of Alafair's favorite writers—Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Jan Burke, Sue Grafton, and Linda Fairstein—lent their endorsements.

Two other Samantha Kincaid novels followed, Missing Justice and Close Case. By that time, however, Alafair had been living in New York City for three years, where she currently teaches criminal law and procedure at Hofstra Law School. She was ready to take on a story set in iconic Manhattan. She was also ready to write about the criminal justice system from a police officer's perspective, putting to use the first-hand experience she had gathered working out of a precinct. From that desire, NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher was born.

In Ellie, Alafair wanted to create a character different from Samantha Kincaid and every other female protagonist in crime fiction. Ellie (like Alafair) was raised in Wichita, Kansas. Her father was a WPD detective who spent his career hunting a serial killer who evaded police for thirty years (sound familiar?). It wasn't only the Wichita connection that came from Alafair's own back story. In the first Ellie Hatcher book, Dead Connection, Ellie tracks a serial killer who uses an online dating service to locate his victims. Not coincidentally, Alafair met her husband, Sean, on Match.com. Somewhat perversely, she dedicated the book to him, writing, "For Sean, I can't believe I found you on a computer."

The Family and the Name

Alafair is the daughter of Pearl and James Lee Burke. Mom was a librarian, Dad was an English professor and is still a writer. The house was filled with story telling and books. Alafair is the youngest of four children and a doting aunt to three nephews and a niece.

Alafair is often asked about the origin of her name, especially by readers who are familiar with the fictional character, Alafair Robicheaux, featured in her father's novels. Alafair was named for her father's maternal grandmother. It was a more common name in the United States, particularly the south, at the turn of the twentieth century. Now it is a name that belongs to her, two of her cousins, and, from what she can find on Google, ten cats, two dogs, an alpaca, and a boat.

ABOUT THE GIFT PACKAGE:

Thanks to Danielle at Harper Collins Publishing and to commemorate the release of Alafair Burke's latest thriller, LONG GONE, I have a complete Alafair Burke Gift Package to give away to one lucky winner. 

The package will include a brand new copy of Burke's LONG GONE as well as his most recent two novels 212 and ANGEL'S TIP.

ABOUT 212:

When New York University sophomore Megan Gunther finds personal threats posted to a Web site specializing in campus gossip, she's taken aback by their menacing tone. Someone knows her daily routine down to the minute and is watching her—but thanks to the anonymity provided by the Internet, the police tell her there's nothing they can do. Her friends are sure it's someone's idea of a joke, but when Megan is murdered in a vicious attack, NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher is convinced that the online threats are more than just empty words.

With smooth, straight-talking partner J. J. Rogan at her side, Ellie tries to identify Megan's enemies, but she begins to wonder if the coed's murder was more than just the culmination of a cyber obsession. Phone records reveal a link between Megan and a murdered real estate agent who was living a dangerous double life. The detectives also learn that the dead real estate agent shared a secret connection to a celebrity mogul whose bodyguard was mysteriously killed a few months earlier. And when Megan's roommate suddenly disappears, they know they have to find her before another young woman dies.

ABOUT ANGEL'S TIP: 

In a city full of victims . . . it's hard to choose just one.

Indiana college student Chelsea Hart's wild evening with affluent young party boys in an elite Manhattan club was the most exhilarating and glamorous night of her life. It was also the last.

Now NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher's obsessive hunt for the co-ed's killer—the only chance to save the next victim—is placing her directly in the sights of a psychopath.

ABOUT THE DUFFER AWARDS:

Alafair Burke is hosting the First Annual Duffer Awards on her website, www.AlafairBurke.com, throughout the month of June.  Not your typical awards, these are named for Alafair’s beloved French Bull Dog, “Duffer”, and are like those Yearbook Awards from high school, but for the fictional characters of some of the biggest mystery and thriller series out there. If you have not been entering, you still can. Click on the Duffer Award Banner above to go to my post and read about it (you will also find a chance for a bonus giveaway entry in case you didn't already know). You can also visit Burke's website with the above link and in my left hand column, is the link so you can enter each day in June to better your chances. Good Luck!

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO DANIELLE AT HARPER COLLINS

FOR ONE ALAFAIR BURKE GIFT PACKAGE AS

DESCRIBED ABOVE FOR ME TO GIVE AWAY

 
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GIVEAWAY ENDS AT
6 PM, EST, JUNE 30

GOOD LUCK!