American legal academic (professor of law, no less) and crime writer Alafair Burke comes with what you’d assume to be a certain amount of authorial DNA (Dad’s James Lee Burke) and has served as a deputy district attorney, so you’d guess she’s got a fair amount of real life encounters with the ugly side of humanity to draw on as well.
She has, to date, come up with two series of crime novels. The earlier stories, set in the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office in Portland, Oregon, feature prosecutor Samantha Kincaid while the later stories are set in New York, with NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher as the main character.
Novels
Judgment Calls (2003)
Missing Justice (2004)
Close Case (2005)
Dead Connection (2007)
City of Fear (Angel's Tip in the USA) (2008)
City of Lies (212 in the USA) (2010)
Long Gone (2011)
Never Tell (2012)
Short stories
Winning (2008)