Miami, It's Murder

Buchanan obviously likes Miami, and it comes through in her writing. She worked as a reporter for many years, and that experience also comes across in this novel. The two main story lines are interesting and do not detract from one another. The pace is quick, the action is exciting, the dialogue is real and the plots twists kept my interest from beginning to end.

Buchanan, former multiple-award-winning crime reporter for the Miami Herald, enjoying a second successful career as an author, has created a fiesty, indefatigable Miami crime reporter in her heroine, Britt Montero. Montero, a Cuban-American, makes her second appearance in this 1994 novel, which juggles three different crime plots in the steamy atmosphere of mid-summer Miami. Montero, whose lonely personal life is never going to get better as long as the job comes first, investigates a series of apt accidents, a serial rapist, and the 20-year old unsolved sex murder of a little girl. Plot lines come to the fore and recede into the background in a natural flow depending on Montero's attention. The child's murder haunts an old cop friend, now dying of heart disease, who believes the hot new candidate for governor is the perp. Montero needles the candidate and interviews the child's family in her spare time. Meanwhile, the rapist grows more violent and spooky with every success. Montero follows his trail from the police lab to her aunt's Santeria rituals, prying information from the police and piecing together articles which infuriate the rapist and make her a target. And accidents keep happening to people who couldn't deserve them more. Montero stays on top of the action, although she doesn't scoop the police completely, which is a nice touch. The newsroom, with its often conflicting interests and strained relationships with police, politicians and each other, crackles with energy. Buchanan's Miami sizzles and Montero takes us to parts of her city no tourist will ever see.

All Edna Buchanan fans eagerly wait for the return of her ace protagonist, Britt Montero, the Cuban-American classy, sassy reporter who won readers in "Contents Under Pressure". A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with the Miami Herald, Buchanan knows of what she writes, and she pens it with thrills, chills, and excitement aplenty. With "Miami, It's Murder," Britt is investigating a series of seemingly unrelated crimes. Now, add a dash of murder which may implicate a contender in the governor's race, athen toss in a soupcon of a maniac who assaults career women in downtown Miami. The suspense mounts as we whip around the curves of this roller coaster web of clues, mystery, and shenanigans. Buchanan writes of Miami and mayhem as no one else can. If you're a mystery fan, settle into an easy chair, pick up this sure fire page-turner, and be prepared for an "oh-my-gosh" conclusion.

Never been in Miami but now it can imagine it and have fun.

This was first reading of this author. It was great. Edna keeps you in suspenders and I like the challenging role she has given BRITT.