Vice

by Edna Buchanan

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Edna Buchanan goes deep into Miami's violent underworld, looking at its bloody history, its unsolved murders, its violent, often drug-related crimes. She details the case of the two-and-a-half-year-old boy framed for murder by his mother, the story of a 90-year-old bridegroom who battered his 76-year-old bride to death with a claw hammer on the first night of their honeymoon, and examines the incidence of alarming numbers of missing persons within the city. Also, there are the heroes - a whole family who are, one by one, cut down by cancer. In a city - thanks in large part to "Miami Vice" - life often imitates art, Edna Buchanan has gruesome stories to tell about the murderers, arsonists, burglars and drug the Miami Beach policemen, the firefighters and the judges. And most important, the ordinary, decent people who help one another and try to build a better city for their children.

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 1992

About the author

Edna Buchanan knew she wanted to be a writer since she was 4 years old. She moved to Florida where she got a job at a small newspaper. Ms. Buchanan became a reporter for the Miami Beach Daily Sun in the late 1960s.

In 1970, she was hired as a general assignment and police-beat reporter at the Miami Herald. In 1973, Ms. Buchanan became a police beat reporter, which coincided with the rise of Miami as a center of the international drug trade.

Winning a Pulitzer Prize, Ms. Buchanan became one of the best-known crime reporters in the U.S. She discussed some of her assignments in the books, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face (1991) and Never Let Them See You Cry (1993). She has retired from journalism and writes mystery novels. The main character in her crime mystery series is Britt Montero.