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Marina
Anatolyevna Alekseeva (pen name - Alexandra
Marinina) was born on July 16, 1957, in Lvov to a
family of lawyers. Marinina's
grandfather worked in jurisprudence in Leningrad.
In the thirties he was the head of the Leningrad
Regional Court.
Her
father, Anatoli Alekseev, worked as a detective
in the Criminal Investigation Department (crime
militia) in Leningrad, in the last years of his
life (he died in 1973) he was the head of the
Anti-Larceny Squad at the Directorate of the
Criminal Investigation Department Ministry of
Interior of the USSR.
Her
mother, Lidia Borisovna Alekseeva, is a
professor, Doctor of Law, First vice-president of
the Law Academy of Russian Ministry of Justice,
and a leading specialist in the jury system in
Russia. Until
1971 Marinina's family lived in Leningrad, then
they moved to Moscow. Marinina graduated from a
special English-language school and the Rimsky-Korsakov
Musical School. In 1979 she received a law degree
from Moscow State University.
She
began her career in with the militia (police) as
laboratory assistant in Academy of Ministry of
Interior of the USSR. In 1980 she was conferred
the rank of lieutenant of militia and began her
scientific work. She worked twenty years (until
March 1998) in the research and educational
institutions of the Ministry of Interior (Academy,
All-Russian Scientific-research Institute, Moscow
High School of Militia, Moscow Law Institute).
The main direction of her scientific research is
criminology and criminal statistics. In 1986
Marinina defended her thesis, "Violent
Criminals and Prevention of Special Recidivism".
As a Candidate of Law (the equivalent of a Ph.D),
Marinina has over 40 theoretical publications,
including the monograph "Crime and Crime
Prevention in Moscow" (in English), which
was published by the UN. Her final position at
the Ministry of Interior was head of section at
the Moscow Law Institute. She retired with the
rank of lieutenant colonel of militia in February
1998. Now she concentrates on literature.
She
wrote her first psychological detective novel,
Concurrence of Circumstances, with the heroine
Anastasia Kamenskaya, a detective from Moscow's
central CID headquarters (criminal militia), in
1992 and it was published in the departmental
magazine "Militia" in 1993. Her next
novel, Away Game, with the same heroine, was also
published in "Militia" in 1994. Alexandra
Marinina's novels have been published by EXMO
publishers since March 1995 ( beginning with
Unwilling Killer). All the novels have the same
central character -- Anastasia Kamenskaya. She
has already written 20 novels. So far since 1995
her books have been published in 170 editions
with a total of over 17 million copies.
In
1995 Marinina was awarded a prize of Ministry of
Interior of Russia for the best literary work
about Russian militia activities. Marinina was
declared "Writer of the Year" at the XI
Moscow International Book Fair. In 1998 the
magazine "Ogonyok" in nominated her
"Success of the year". Her phenomenal
success led Cult of Personalities (Russia's
People magazine) to put her on it's list of the
Top 25 Most Influential People in Russia. In
1998 Alexandra Marinina signed the first
contracts with foreign publishing houses on
publishing novels in foreign languages. In 1998
her 3 novels were published in Italy ("Piemme"
publishing house), 2 novels - in Latvia ("Tapals"
publishing house), one novel in Korea, France
("Seuil" publishing house), and Germany
("Argon" publishing house). In 1999
Marinina's novels will be published in above-named
countries and also in China, Japan, Sweden,
Netherlands and other countries.
Currently
the production of a 16-part television series
based on the first eight Marinina's novels is
under way. The producers are "NTV-kino"
and "Recun-film" together with "EXMO"
publishing house (executive producer and artistic
manager - Valeriy Todorovsky). Marinina's
main character reminds us of the author's
personality. Like Nastya Kamenskaya, Marinina
prefers black and violet colors in clothing,
smokes too much (she prefers light cigarettes
with menthol), drinks coffee, doesn't drink
alcohol (except some Martini Bianco), has trouble
getting up in the morning, doesn't like
housework, often has backaches, enjoys classical
music, hates exercise, and becomes totally
immersed in her favorite activity - creative work.
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