US attorney-turned-author Linda Fairstein is well placed to write about a female prosecutor working in the Manhattan DA's office.

In the mid-1970s, she was appointed to head up the office's first sex-crimes unit.

'It was a long time before we could attract men, but when it became a more glamorous sector - when DNA testing arrived - we worked hard to get some of the best men in the office,' she told the Gazette during a recent promotional tour of the UK.

The use in evidence of DNA - which Ms Fairstein describes as 'my three favourite letters' - created a revolution in the prosecution of sex crimes, she says, and she supervised the Manhattan prosecutions during this revolution.

Most would consider Manhattan a crime hotspot, but Ms Fairstein says: 'Sex crimes are an equal opportunity employer - despite the high occurrence in Manhattan, they happen in just about every culture in the world.'

In 2002, Ms Fairstein retired from her position in the DA's office to write full time.

The transition from a job which she describes as 'not the kind where you leave your desk, switch the light out and switch off', has not always been easy.

She says: 'The prosecution job is adversarial - that's the thing I like about it.

There is enormous collegiality; like in 'Kojak', we cover each other's backs.

Leaving that is the hardest thing.

[Writing is] so solitary.

I'm so used to a team process.'

But she keeps abreast of the prosecution issues.

A big topic at the moment is date-rape drugs.

She explains: 'These are a huge in the US and a growing UK problem.

Some [women] can be drugged without being aware, making them more vulnerable.

But there is also the problem of people using them recreationally; there are girls who we thought had been given these drugs, but in fact they get high in clubs and then take horse tranquillisers as a downer.

We've had kids die in the city this way.'

Ms Fairstein writes in the first person and the protaganist of her books is a prosecutor called Alex Cooper.

She says: 'It's a cakewalk to get in her head.

When I write the Alex Cooper role, what she thinks is a reflection of my attitudes, but the personal side is poetic licence.'

The 57-year-old adds coyly: 'Alex is slimmer, younger and more attractive than me.'

Ms Fairstein says she has enjoyed greater freedom in her writing since ending her legal career - she says it is much easier to write honestly about judges, for example.

Better known in the US than UK, Ms Fairstein has acted as a guru to Hollywood director Alan Pakula, who sought her advice in preparing Greta Scacci for her role in 'Presumed Innocent', while Kelly McGillis - who was the victim of a knife-point rape while working as a waitress in Manhattan in the 1970s - took advice from Ms Fairstein in preparing for her role as a female prosecutor in 'The Accused'.

If the quality of fiction only reflected the experience of the writer, Ms Fairstein would have a head start, but she adds the zeal of a sex-crimes prosecuting missionary.

Jeremy Fleming