Buchanan, Edna 1939(?)–

(Edna Rydzik Buchanan)

PERSONAL: Born c. 1939 (one source says c. 1946), near Paterson, NJ; daughter of a factory worker/tavern operator and a respiratory therapist; married Jim Buchanan (a reporter; divorced, 1965); married Emmett Miller (a police officer; divorced). Education: Attended creative writing classes at Montclair State Teachers College. Religion: United Church of Christ.

ADDRESSES: Home—Miami, FL. Agent—Michael Congdon, Don Congdon Associates, 156 5th Ave., Ste. 625, New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Writer. Western Electric Co., Paterson, NJ, switchboard wirer; affiliated with Daily Sun, Miami, FL; Miami Herald, Miami, general assignment and criminal court reporter, 1970–73, police beat reporter, 1973–88.

MEMBER: International Forensic Research Institute (member, external advisory board), Miami Sherlock Holmes Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Awards from American Bar Association, National Newspaper Association, and Florida Society of Newspapers, all 1970s; Green Eye Shade Award, Society of Professional Journalists, 1982, for deadline reporting; Pulitzer Prize, 1986, for general reporting; Edgar Award nominee for best novel, 1990, for Nobody Lives Forever, and 1994, for Miami, It's Murder; best crime fiction novel award, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and best mystery award, San Francisco Chronicle, both 1992, both for Contents under Pressure; George Polk Award, Long Island University, 2001, for career achievement in journalism.

WRITINGS:

"BRITT MONTERO" MYSTERY SERIES

Contents under Pressure, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1992.

Miami, It's Murder, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1994.

Suitable for Framing, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1995.

Act of Betrayal, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1996.

Margin of Error, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1997.

Garden of Evil, Avon (New York, NY), 1999.

You Only Die Twice, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2001.

The Ice Maiden, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2002.

OTHER

Carr: Five Years of Rape and Murder; From the Personal Account of Robert Frederick Carr III (nonfiction), Dutton (New York, NY), 1979.

The Corpse Had a Familiar Face: Covering Miami, America's Hottest Beat (nonfiction), Random House (New York, NY), 1987.

Nobody Lives Forever (fiction), Random House (New York, NY), 1990.

Never Let Them See You Cry: More from Miami, America's Hottest Beat (nonfiction), Random House (New York, NY), 1992.

Pulse (fiction), Avon (New York, NY), 1998.

Cold Case Squad (fiction), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

Shadows (fiction), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to Naked Came the Manatee, Putnam (New York, NY), 1996, and Mary Higgins Clark Presents: The Plot Thickens, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1997. Contributor of articles to magazines, including Fame, Family Circle, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone.

ADAPTATIONS: The Corpse Had a Familiar Face was adapted as a television film starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. (CBS); Nobody Lives Forever was adapted as a television film, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC). Rights to several of the "Britt Montero" books were purchased by Disney/Hyperion. Several of Buchanan's books have been adapted as audiotapes.

SIDELIGHTS: Edna Buchanan has earned high accolades and a loyal following of readers with her high-voltage crime reporting and her exciting mystery novels. Since 1973, Buchanan has covered more than five thousand violent crime cases—most of them murders—as the police beat reporter for the Miami Herald. "In Miami," asserted Calvin Trillin in New Yorker, "a few figures are regularly discussed by first name among people they have never actually met. One of them … is Edna." Working a beat many journalists dread, Buchanan gained recognition by being a tough but sympathetic reporter—strong enough to coolly sort out factual details in the midst of grisly murder scenes, yet empathetic enough to comfort survivors before asking them questions. "Clearly a feminist heroine," as Anne Rice described her in the New York Times Book Review, "[Buchanan] is also an old-fashioned American in many ways. A self-made woman with unabashed ideals and a healthy suspicion of anyone who tries to hide the truth, she is an individual to the core."

As one of the first female crime reporters in Miami, Buchanan initially experienced difficulty with male police officers, who treated her as "some empty-headed blonde," Buchanan told Cheryl Lavin in Chicago Tribune. Buchanan soon convinced the officers that she was serious about her work, gradually earning the respect, if not the admiration, of many of the forty-five-hundred police officers in the Miami area. "I think now that being a woman can sometimes be an advantage," Buchanan told Lavin. "Some of the macho-type cops prefer whispering secrets into the ear of a woman than of some cigar-smoking male reporter." Buchanan's journalistic work, which garnered her a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, is highlighted by what Trillin called the "classic Edna lead," which generally consists of a simple, factual statement intended to jolt the reader. She related to Trillin that a good lead should cause a typical morning reader to "spit out his coffee, clutch his chest, and say, 'My God, Martha! Did you read this!'" One example often cited comes from a story in which a man was killed in a fast-food chicken restaurant. Buchanan began her article: "Gary Robinson died hungry."

In 1979, Buchanan published her first book, Carr: Five Years of Rape and Murder; From the Personal Account of Robert Frederick Carr III, an account of a serial rapist. Robert Carr, an automobile salesman who scored well on IQ tests, left his family in 1971 because he had an uncontrollable desire to rape. He embarked on a five-year journey around the country in search of victims and, through his charismatic personality, often succeeded in gaining the confidence of women he subsequently assaulted. Once arrested, Carr made a full confession to police and later to Buchanan, who then wrote Carr, a book some have described as a rare examination of the criminal psyche. About Carr's willingness to talk, Buchanan once told CA: "In the cases of criminals, their willingness to talk is often because they like to have their stories told. It's sort of an ego trip with them; many of them want to talk about it, and they're really glad somebody's interested. The police just want to know the details of the crime. A reporter is more interested in what made them become what they are and will ask them questions about where they're from and what they think and what they were like when they were children. People in jail get very bored. They love to have somebody to talk to."

In 1987, Buchanan published a memoir titled The Corpse Had a Familiar Face: Covering Miami, America's Hottest Beat. The book recounts the stories surrounding several of the thousands of cases Buchanan covered for the Miami Herald. Among the many disturbing tales are those of a rookie policeman startled by a naked man throwing a severed head at him, and of Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive who was killed on his motorcycle in 1980. Buchanan's investigation of McDuffie's death turned up evidence that led to the indictment of five white police officers. The eventual release of the five officers set off race riots that killed eighteen people. Rice asserted that "Buchanan's prose is clean, precise and ultimately irresistible. As a sordid yet exciting world unfolds, we are always aware of Ms. Buchanan's wholesome presence, reassured by her unobtrusive moral overview of the shocking scenes she brings to life." Michele Landsberg wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail that Buchanan "writes about these gory years [of reporting for the Miami Herald] in classic detective-story prose, only better: punchy, pared-down, darkly funny, nearly every paragraph ending with a terse zinger that hot-wires your brain."

"The cases that haunt me the most are not necessarily the most gory or gruesome," Buchanan once told CA. "They're the missing people who are never found, the murder that goes forever unsolved, the unidentified bodies that we never name or return to their families. But, of course, there have been some cases that are unforgettable because they're so bizarre. There was the case of the naked man who threw the severed head at the young police officer. There was the case of Carl Brown, a paranoid high school teacher who suspected that a welding shop had overcharged him for repairs to his bicycle. He went back the next day heavily armed and killed eight people in the welding shop—the owner, the owner's mother, the secretary, the workers—and wounded three others. As he was making his getaway, a passing motorist, who realized what he had done and happened to have a gun in the car, killed him. When the police arrived there were nine dead people and three seriously wounded. That was a pretty terrible case."

In 1988, Buchanan took a leave of absence from Miami Herald, but never returned to the job, instead turning her energies to writing novels. Her first, Nobody Lives Forever, garnered her an Edgar Award nomination. Set in Miami, the novel features characters similar to those described in The Corpse Had a Familiar Face: Rick, an alluring police sergeant; Dusty, a sensuous female detective; Jim, an aged and exhausted policeman; and a variety of criminals and victims. Although Margaret Cannon claimed in the Toronto Globe and Mail that Buchanan is much better at writing nonfiction than fiction, Washington Post critic Eugene Izzi thought otherwise. Izzi maintained that "Buchanan states her case flawlessly, sensibly allowing her characters to make the points she wishes to get across, never getting in the way as they make their choices and live with them. There are enough twists and turns here to satisfy the most discriminating readers and enough dark humor to have them laughing aloud, lulled into a false sense of security until Buchanan assaults them with the next barrage of suspense and high excitement."

Contents under Pressure, Buchanan's second novel, is again set in Miami. The story revolves around the death of a black football star at the hands of the Miami police, allegedly for resisting arrest. This leads eventually to race riots, a scene that Charles Champlin in the Los Angeles Times Book Review called "a sensational stretch of narrative writing, with an awful immediacy and power." The novel was the first to feature Britt Montero, a beautiful Cuban-American reporter who frequently goes above and beyond the call of duty to pursue a story. Montero's father, a Cuban freedom-fighter, was executed when she was only three years old; her mother, who frequently appears in the series, is highly fashion-conscious and nags Britt relentlessly. Champlin placed Montero "right in the mode of the new crime heroines," and saw her as the perfect conduit for Buchanan's portrait of Miami, "in all its complexities and contrasts of race, wealth and worries."

Miami, It's Murder, the second Britt Montero novel, revolves around a twenty-two-year-old rape and murder case. Britt's prime suspect is gubernatorial candidate Eric Fielding, a young man at the time of the crime. Booklist reviewer Wes Lukowsky called the ending "a little hokey," but argued that Buchanan has "no trouble translating her experiences on the crime beat into first-rate mystery fiction."

Britt Montero returned again in Suitable for Framing, for which Buchanan received a second Edgar Award nomination. In this novel, after helping young Trish Tierney get work as a reporter, Montero finds herself the suspect in a brutal murder. Wes Lukowsky, writing in Booklist, called Suitable for Framing "a quick and entertaining read" despite the book's "busy, busy plot." A Publishers Weekly reviewer argued that Suitable for Framing "offers atmosphere and entertainment," and a Kirkus Reviews writer concluded that "even on deadline, Buchanan couldn't write a boring page."

In her next installment, Buchanan has Montero face a devastating hurricane, a serial killer who preys on young boys, and the man responsible for her father's death by a Cuban firing squad. Act of Betrayal moves at a "frenetic pace," according to Buffalo News reviewer Jane Kwiatkowski, making the tidy ending "difficult to digest." The rather grim storyline provided a new twist for Margin of Error, which followed Act of Betrayal. In Margin of Error, Montero is so traumatized by the events in Act of Betrayal that her editor gives her an assignment that is supposed to be restful—helping superstar actor Lance Westfell to prepare for a role as a newspaper reporter in an upcoming film. Initially irritated by the job, Montero finds herself becoming romantically involved with the handsome leading man. Work on his film becomes hazardous, as a stunt double is blown up and thousands of acres of the Everglades catch fire after an arsonist visits the movie set. Reviewing the book for the Houston Chronicle, Amy Rabinovitz noted that it "moves fast and reads well." Steve Weinberg, writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, commented: "As always, Buchanan manages to educate readers about good and bad journalism while also entertaining them."

Montero's adventures continue in Garden of Evil, in which she has a meeting with a female serial killer who seduces men, then guns them down with lipstick-smeared bullets. Although the interview with the killer was set up by the police, things go wrong, and Britt is kidnapped by the murderer. A reviewer for the Cincinnati Post noted that the book moves at a "hectic pace" and is written in "crisp prose."

You Only Die Twice is "one of Buchanan's best, for three reasons," stated Steve Weinberg in the Denver Post. "First, character development. Second, plot development. Third, authenticity." The story turns on the discovery of the corpse of Kaithlin Jordan, a beautiful young woman found floating in the surf. The body is positively identified, but there is one puzzling aspect to the case: Kaithlin was already declared dead a decade earlier, and her husband is on Death Row awaiting execution for her murder. Although Jordan is already dead when the story opens, Buchanan nevertheless manages to evoke her as "an unforgettable, richly rendered human being," according to Weinberg. The reviewer also approved of the way each of Buchanan's novels "becomes a journalism procedural," in which the author "shares trade secrets galore with her readers." Weinberg concluded that You Only Die Twice "might make a good textbook for novice journalists."

"Nobody does paradise noir better than Buchanan," wrote Connie Fletcher in a Booklist review of the Britt Montero novel The Ice Maiden. The story begins with the gruesome discovery of a dead burglar who was electrocuted by the security system of a Miami jewelry store. The burglar piques the interest of the Cold Case Squad as a link to a fourteen-year-old case involving two kidnapped and tortured teenagers. Only one of the victims, a girl named Sunny, survived the ordeal, eventually becoming a reclusive ice sculptor. Montero seeks out the woman in order to solve the case at last. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly appreciated Buchanan's colorful subplots, which include romance, domestic violence, a trapped baby, and the 9/11 disaster, as well as the empathy she conveys for the victims of crime, concluding that the book is "exceptionally dark and moving."

Buchanan took a break from the Britt Montero series with Cold Case Squad, which includes characters first introduced in The Ice Maiden. The novel features a team of Miami detectives headed by Sergeant Craig Burch, who narrates the stories in first person. The case in question concerns a twelve-year-old murder in which a man was killed when his classic Thunderbird blew up while he was repairing with it. Now April Terrell, the dead man's ex-wife, has contacted the Miami police because she thinks she has just seen her supposedly dead husband alive and well. Though Fletcher, writing in Booklist, wished the characters had been more developed, she stated that "Buchanan is on more solid ground with plot and forensic procedure." A writer for Kirkus Reviews praised the novel's detailed plot, calling it "an endless carnival of crime."

The Cold Case Squad returns in Shadows, which concerns a historic Miami landmark, the Shadows mansion. The house is scheduled to be demolished, but a woman who wants to save it insists that it holds the key to the 1961 murder of its former occupant, the mayor of Miami. The cold case cops decide to investigate and find a room full of mummified babies in the basement. Needless to say, interest in the 1961 murder is revived, and the prime suspect is the mayor's widow. Fletcher, writing in Booklist, proclaimed the novel "fast, funny, and shocking," and a writer for Kirkus Reviews praised Buchanan for penning "another masterfully crowded canvas."

Buchanan once told CA: "When I applied for my first newspaper job, the editor asked if I'd ever worked on a newspaper before, if I had studied journalism in school. My heart sank. I thought I had lost my chance. I said, 'No,' and he said, 'Good. Then we won't have to unteach you anything.' I think I learned it the hard way, as I did everything. I worked at a small newspaper for five years, doing a little bit of everything. That was my real education, on-the-job training. And of course I had to be getting paid at the time; I needed a job. I have often felt that maybe I could have done better had I had a college degree or studied journalism. But I guess I've done OK. I was lucky. I just fell into the newspaper career—and fell into Miami, which was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I really love it here. It's the most enduring love affair I've ever had…. It's a very captivating place. It feeds creativity; there are a lot of good writers down here, and it's a wonderful place to be a writer. I've lived here now for more than twenty-five years, and yet it still excites me to see banana trees growing in my backyard and palm trees outlined against the sky and the water."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Armchair Detective, summer, 1996, review of Act of Betrayal, p. 357; fall, 1996, review of Act of Betrayal, p. 477.

Austin American-Statesman, April 8, 2001, Anne Morris, review of You Only Die Twice, p. K6.

Booklist, December 1, 1993, Wes Lukowsky, review of Miami, It's Murder, p. 659; January 15, 1995, Wes Lukowsky, review of Suitable for Framing, p. 868; May 1, 1997, Wes Lukowsky, review of Margin of Error, p. 1460; March 15, 1998, Wes Lukowsky, review of Pulse, p. 1179; September 15, 1999, review of Garden of Evil, p. 196; January 1, 2001, Wes Lukowsky, review of You Only Die Twice, p. 869; May 1, 2001, review of Garden of Evil, p. 1602, and Karen Harris, review of Garden of Evil (audio version), p. 1627; October 1, 2002, Connie Fletcher, review of The Ice Maiden, p. 275; April 1, 2004, Connie Fletcher, review of Cold Case Squad, p. 1330; May 1, 2005, Connie Fletcher, review of Shadows, p. 1516.

Books, February, 1996, review of Suitable for Framing, p. 21.

Bookwatch, October, 1996, review of Act of Betrayal (audio version), p. 9; February, 1998, review of Margin of Error (audio version), p. 11.

Buffalo News, March 10, 1996, Jane Kwiatkowski, review of Act of Betrayal, p. G6; December 19, 1999, Andrew Galarneau, review of Garden of Evil, p. E6.

Chicago Tribune, October 16, 1987, John Blades, review of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face: Covering Miami, America's Hottest Beat, p. 3; December 27, 1987, Cheryl Lavin, "Q & A with Edna Buchanan," p. 4.

Cincinnati Post, January 15, 2000, review of Garden of Evil, p. 10C.

Denver Post, April 5, 1998, review of Pulse, p. F5; April 22, 2001, Steve Weinberg, review of You Only Die Twice, p. F1.

Entertainment Weekly, February 23, 1996, review of Suitable for Framing, p. 119; March 8, 1996, Gene Lyons, review of Act of Betrayal, p. 61; March 14, 1997, Robin J. Schwartz, review of Naked Came the Manatee, p. 75; June 12, 1998, review of Pulse, p. 71; November 26, 1999, review of Garden of Evil, p. 86.

Financial Times, February 24, 1996, Michael Carlson, review of Suitable for Framing.

Fresno Bee, September 7, 1997, Barbara Vancheri, review of Act of Betrayal, p. G2.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), October 31, 1987, Michele Landsberg, review of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face; December 5, 1987, review of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face; March 3, 1990, Margaret Cannon, review of Nobody Lives Forever.

Houston Chronicle, October 5, 1997, Amy Rabinovitz, review of Margin of Error, p. 23.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1994, review of Suitable for Framing, p. 1574; May 15, 1997, review of Margin of Error, p. 758; March 15, 1998, review of Pulse, p. 353; November 1, 1999, review of Garden of Evil, p. 1683; February 1, 2001, review of You Only Die Twice, p. 145; April 15, 2004, review of Cold Case Squad, p. 363; April 15, 2005, review of Shadows, p. 453.

Kliatt, January, 1996, review of Suitable for Framing, p. 51.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, March 28, 2001, Oline H. Cogdill, review of You Only Die Twice, p. K5992; April 11, 2001, Nancy Pate, review of You Only Die Twice, p. K4841.

Library Journal, March 1, 1994, review of Miami, It's Murder, p. 123; October 1, 1996, Germaine C. Linkins, review of Act of Betrayal (audio version), p. 142; July, 1997, review of Margin of Error, p. 131; November 1, 1997, review of Margin of Error (audio version), p. 130; April 15, 1998, Rebecca House Stankowski, review of Pulse, p. 111; November 1, 1999, Rebecca House Stankowski, review of Garden of Evil, p. 128; April 1, 2001, Rebecca House Stankowski, review of You Only Die Twice, p. 131.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 20, 1992, Charles Champlin, review of Contents under Pressure, p. 8.

New Yorker, February 17, 1986, Calvin Trillin, "Covering the Cops."

New York Times, March 2, 1996, review of Act of Betrayal, p. C16.

New York Times Book Review, December 13, 1987, Anne Rice, review of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, p. 23; October 18, 1992, Josh Rubins, review of Contents under Pressure, p. 38; February 19, 1995, review of Miami, It's Murder, p. 36; March 24, 1996, Dennis J. Carroll, review of Act of Betrayal, p. 19.

Palm Beach Post, April 15, 2001, Paul Lomartire, review of You Only Die Twice (audio version), p. 5J.

People, December 13, 1999, review of Garden of Evil, p. 61; April 30, 2001, review of You Only Die Twice, p. 43.

Publishers Weekly, November 13, 1987, review of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face; September 28, 1992, review of Contents under Pressure, p. 54; December 19, 1994, review of Miami, It's Murder, p. 52; January 16, 1995, review of Suitable for Framing, p. 440; January 1, 1996, review of Act of Betrayal, p. 61; June 2, 1997, review of Margin of Error, p. 57; March 30, 1998, review of Pulse, p. 69; October 11, 1999, review of Garden of Evil, p. 58; March 5, 2001, review of You Only Die Twice, p. 66; July 2, 2001, review of You Only Die Twice, p. 31; September 23, 2002, review of The Ice Maiden, p. 46; April 19, 2004, review of Cold Case Squad, p. 37.

Rapport, May, 1999, review of Pulse, p. 30.

Record (Bergen County, NJ), April 8, 2001, Rod Allee, "Good Cop, Bad Cop—It's a Fine Line," p. N1.

Rocky Mountain News, March 9, 1997, Mark Graham, review of Naked Came the Manatee, p. 26D.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 31, 1997, Steve Weinberg, review of Margin of Error, p. 5C.

Sarasota Herald Tribune, May 24, 1996, Naomi Donson, review of Act of Betrayal, p. 4B.

Time, September 28, 1987, review of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, p. 65.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), September 20, 1992, Richard Martins, review of Contents under Pressure, p. 4; February 5, 1995, review of Suitable for Framing, p. 7; August 3, 1997, review of Margin of Error, p. 11.

Virginian Pilot-Ledger Star (Norfolk, VA), August 21, 1997, Ann G. Sjoerdsma, review of Margin of Error, p. E7.

Vogue, August, 1997, Mary Cantwell, review of Margin of Error, p. 134.

Washington Post, February 15, 1990, Eugene Izzi, review of Nobody Lives Forever.

Washington Post Book World, July 20, 1997, Paul Skenazy, review of Margin of Error, p. 10.

Washington Times, April 1, 2001, Judith Kreiner, review of You Only Die Twice, p. 8.

ONLINE

Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (June 4, 2004), interview with Edna Buchanan; (September 29, 2006), Bernadette Davis, review of Shadows, Joe Hartlaub, review of Cold Case Squad, and Andy Plonka, reviews of Shadows and The Ice Maiden.

Edna Buchanan Web site, http://www.ednabuchanan.com (September 29, 2006).