Edna Buchanan is often referred to as the “Queen of Crime.” The title is fitting. During her 18-year tenure as the crime reporter for the Miami Herald, Buchanan wrote about more than 5,000 violent deaths. In 1986, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her police beat reporting and later won the George Polk Award for Career Achievement in Journalism.

She was born in New Jersey in 1939 and took a creative writing course at Montclair State College, where she was encouraged to become a writer.

When Buchanan and her mother took a vacation to Miami Beach, she fell in love with the Sunshine State.

“The instant I breathed the air, it was like coming home,” she told the New Yorker in 1986. “I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I had been wandering around in a daze up there, like a displaced person. I was always a misfit.” 

Buchanan got her first reporting job at the now-defunct Miami Beach Sun and in 1973 took on the police beat at the Herald. In addition to standalone novels and non-fiction works, she’s the author of the Britt Montero and Craig Burch series

Edna Buchanan lives in Miami Beach, Fl.

Florida Books by Edna Buchanan


Nobody Lives Forever

Published: 1990
What do a menacing housewife, a kinky bad girl, a shy child, and a cold-blooded killer have in common? Veteran Miami homicide detective Rick Barrish sets out for the answer as he investigates a series of seemingly unrelated murders in his own neighborhood and hunts down an elusive killer in…Read More
Categories: Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan , standalone

Contents Under Pressure

Published: 1992
A crime reporter for a major Miami newspaper, Cuban-born Britt Montero practically sleeps with a police scanner by her bedside. When a high-speed police chase leads to the death of a black football hero, Britt discovers that what seems like an open-and-shut case is actually an intricate web of racially…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Miami, It’s Murder

Published: 1994
On the police beat for her Miami newspaper, Cuban-born Britt Montero has a lot on her hands. She’s investigating a series of bizarre deaths involving sex, electrocution, and freshly poured concrete. As if that isn’t enough, there’s the long-unsolved murder of a young girl that may implicate the frontrunner in…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Suitable for Framing

Published: 1994
A mother and child are the recent victims of a carjacking followed by a fatal hit-and-run. Miami crime reporter Britt Montero witnesses the tragedy—and relentlessly pursues the story. But at the same time, trouble lurks in the newsroom. A new, ambitious reporter covets Britt’s job, and Britt begins to suspect…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Act of Betrayal

Published: 1996
When Miami crime reporter Britt Montero reports a missing teenager, she discovers that the case may be related to a string of unsolved disappearances. As Britt delves into the baffling case, an old mystery opens new wounds: she unexpectedly meets two men who knew her deceased father—who was executed long…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Margin of Error

Published: 1997
Crime reporter Britt Montero had to shoot a man to save her own life, and the memory of it is tormenting her. So when a major Hollywood actor strides into the newsroom, hoping to do research for the character he portrays, the seemingly cushy job is given to Britt in…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Pulse

Published: 1998
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her crime reporting, Edna Buchanan now occupies a place of honor in the pantheon of American suspense novelists; a master storyteller whose chillingly inventive plots hold a reader spellboound from the opening word.Frank Douglas has everything to live for. But someone else had to…Read More
Categories: Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan , standalone

Garden of Evil

Published: 1999
While attempting an arrest, a sheriff is slain by an enigmatic young woman who promptly vanishes into the northern Florida landscape. As the story comes over the wire, reporter Britt Montero is intrigued. Few copkillers escape so easily.The murders continue. Men are lured into sex by the same woman, their…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

You Only Die Twice

Published: 2001
The perfect, nude corpse of a beautiful woman washes up on a pristine Miami Beach — her body tanned and shapely, her nails elegantly manicured. The problem is that the victim, Kaithlin Jordan, was murdered ten years ago. And her convicted killer — her husband, R. J. Jordan, scion of…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Cold Case Squad

Published: 2001
“Like all things good and bad in the world, it began with a woman…” And so begins the first chapter of Edna Buchanan’s Cold Case Squad, a new suspense novel that features a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases. A man and a woman are shot…Read More
Categories: Craig Burch , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

The Ice Maiden

Published: 2002
A chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of reporter Britt Montero forever. The encounter is at Miami’s morgue, where the unidentified stranger lies dead. His unusual old scars capture her curiosity-the dead man clearly had a tale to tell. This thief, who was accidentally electrocuted, may be the…Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Shadows

Published: 2005
In order to block a high-rise developer’s plans to bulldoze the Shadows — a gorgeous 1920s mansion in Miami — a resourceful young preservationist approaches the police department’s Cold Case Squad. Years ago, the high-profile owner of the Shadows was murdered and the crime has remained unsolved. Never content to…Read More
Categories: Craig Burch , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

Love Kills

Published: 2007
Attempting to recover from her lover’s death on a Caribbean island, ace crime reporter Britt Montero teams up with the Cold Case Squad on a murder investigation while simultaneously tracking down a serial killer who is targeting honeymooners.Read More
Categories: Britt Montero Mysteries , Detective and Mystery Series , Edna Buchanan

A Dark and Lonely Place

Published: 2011
From Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Buchanan, the novel she has always wanted to write: the gripping saga of star-crossed lovers across generations. A century ago, when Indians and alligators roamed frontier Miami, the legendary John Ashley was accused of murder and sentenced to hang. He insisted he was innocent and…Read More
Categories: Edna Buchanan , Historical Fiction , standalone