Lainie Anderson
Author of Crime/Thriller
based in SA
Lainie Anderson completed a PhD with the University of South Australia in 2024, exploring the life of Adelaide’s pioneering policewoman Kate Cocks. Lainie’s debut murder mystery The Death of Dora Black is inspired by Cocks and her groundbreaking Women’s Police Branch. The second book in the Petticoat Police Mystery Series is Murder on North Terrace, out September 2025. Lainie’s 35-year journalism career includes stints at Melbourne’s Herald Sun, London’s The Times and 17 years as a columnist with Adelaide’s Sunday Mail. In 2016 she won a Churchill Fellowship to gauge the significance of the 1919 Air Race from England to Australia and the Vickers Vimy aircraft housed at Adelaide Airport. Her first novel Long Flight Home and a documentary for SBS TV were inspired by the race. Lainie sits on the executive committee of the History Council of SA and the SA selection panel for the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. She is a History Guardian for the South Australian History Trust and was SA’s 2023 Emerging Historian of the Year.
