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Lisa Black follows the oldest of writer adages — write what you know.

“Takeover” protagonist Theresa MacLean works for the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office, as Black did for five years. The book takes place in Cleveland, a city Black called home for her entire life until her husband, an elevator mechanic, decided he was tired of the cold and wanted to move to Florida.

Her character knows what Black knows. She understands gunpowder burns and stippling. She’s got a little experience in blood splatter analysis, an area of forensics Black is studying.

MacLean is Black and Black is MacLean.

But through the virtues of artistic license, Black has made herself better at just about everything.

A little smarter, more daring, not as staid or routine-driven.

“I’m a little boring,” Black says. “But that wouldn’t be good for a book.”

So in Theresa MacLean, the protagonist for Black’s most recent procedural thriller, “Takeover,” Black has shaved away the dull edges to create someone who is just like her, but more exciting.

For example, Black has been happily married for decades, ”which is totally boring.” MacLean is single.

“You have to have some flexibility with your characters so you can put them in interesting situations,” she says.

Most of Black’s time at her day job, as a latent fingerprints specialist at the Cape Coral Police Department, finds her parked at her cubicle using her computer to analyze fingerprints taken from the crime scenes.

If you didn’t have to pass through the three layers of security, swiping ID badges along the way, you’d think she worked as an accountant from her work space. It’s a small cubicle in a small room, tucked back at the end of a small hallway. A half-eaten birthday cake, brought in by her coworker to celebrate her 45th birthday, and a box of donuts sit on a small table in the middle of the room.

It’s only when she shows you the small lab next door that you feel like she’s a scientist. It’s nothing like the sprawling, impossibly modern labs that you see on “CSI.” Actually, it used to be a storage closet. But in there, Black does her part to put away the bad guys.

The tight space fits her personality. “I could never have been a detective,” she says. “I’m not much of a people person. So doing this work suits me.”

It’s a job she’s damn good at, says Larry Stringham, her supervisor and head of the department’s forensics team.

“Thanks to Lisa we’ve become one of the best units in the state,” he says. “She makes me look good.”

And, Stringham is quick to point out, she’s a “really good writer.”

Neither writing nor forensics were part of Black’s plan back when she was Elizabeth Becka, which was her maiden name and the name she used for her first two novels published by Hyperion. When she moved to William Morrow last year, she changed her nom de plume. “I guess that’s what you do when you switch publishers.”

Becka’s plan was to work in politics. She went to college and majored in political science, but she “had no idea what that really meant.”

“I just liked the idea of D.C.,” she says.

She ended up as a secretary. And for 10 years she toiled in assistant jobs, longing for something more. She started writing, finishing a few novels, mostly action adventure stuff, like Alistair MacLean. “I own a copy of every one of his books, and that’s why my main character is named MacLean.”

She mailed off copies to agents and publishers without getting much in the way of interest.

Frustrated and longing to be something more than a secretary, she enrolled at Cleveland State University to get another degree, this time in biology. And after finishing, she took a job at the coroner’s office examining victim’s clothes, eventually learning the tricks of the trade that Theresa MacLean relies on to solve the mysteries Black creates for her.

After years of struggling to get published, Black stopped writing. She was learning so much that she didn’t have time. But that time proved invaluable.

“Lisa really knows her stuff,” Stringham says. “When you read her books, you know that she’s an expert in forensics. Everything is exactly how it is in real life.”

It’s that realism that helps Black succeed in a market saturated with forensic procedurals. Since the meteoric rise of “CSI” eight years ago, there has been a seemingly endless line of copycats both on TV and in print.

For her part, Black says she’d be writing about forensics regardless of the “CSI” effect. But the popularity of the genre is definitely in her favor.

“It certainly helps sales,” she says smiling, though she says she doesn’t really pay too much attention to that. “I looked at my Amazon ranking one time and got a little depressed. And you can’t ever really get a straight answer from the publishers about sales.”

But the folks at William Morris must be pleased. They’ve ordered a second Theresa MacLean mystery for next year.

“It’s already done,” Black says.

Now she’s back to the drawing board for yet another book starring the more daring version of herself. And thinking of exciting ways to spend her advance money.

“I told my sisters that we are going back to Europe,” she says. “So they shouldn’t make any plans for 2010.”