Aleksandra Marinina (born July 16, 1957, real name Marina Anatolyevna Alekseyeva) is a best-selling Russian writer of detective stories. Marinina was born in Lvov, Ukraine to a family of lawyers. She lived in Leningrad until 1971 and has lived in Moscow since then. She received a degree in law from the Moscow State University in 1979. From 1979 to 1998 she worked in research and education units of the MVD. She studied the personality of criminals with anomalies of mentality and criminals who have committed repeated violent crimes.
She has written over 30 novels, published in over 17 million copies and translated into over 20 languages. Most of her novels have a common central character Anastasia (Nastya) Kamenskaya. A television series Kamenskaya based on eight of Marinina's novels was shown on national Russian TV, and also in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Germany and France. Marinina has received several awards. In 1995 Marinina received the prize of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the best book about work of the Russian militia, for books Death for the Sake of Death and Away Game but in March 2003 in Moscow Star square roadway is walled in glory star with, in Russia the biggest edition issued novel author – Aleksandra Marinina name. …