Synopsis
A street-smart expose+a7 of the Miami crime scene recalls tragic and amusing tales of murdered millionaires, preschool witnesses, walking corpses, and wandering fowl. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour.
Reviews
YA-- Buchanan brings sensitivity, wonder, a critical eye, and storytelling skills to this portrayal of her crime beat in Miami. True crime fans will feast upon the rapid-fire case studies, the tales of heros and villains, and the human-interest stories behind the scenes. Pleasure readers and aspiring investigators or reporters can spend two minutes dipping into a story, a little longer for a chapter, or settle in for the whole book.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Slightly blurred carbon copy of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, Buchanan's riveting 1987 report on crimes she'd covered during her nearly 20 years as a Pulitzer-winning reporter for The Miami Herald. Novelistic tones still vibrating from Buchanan's less compelling 1990 police procedural, Nobody Lives Forever-- particularly those emanating from plucked heartstrings--are what distinguish this new crime roundup from Corpse. Again, Buchanan proclaims her love affair with Miami (``The hot-blooded heartbeat of this passionate and mercurial city touches my soul'') and only whispers of her checkered romantic life--but where in Corpse the hundreds of case histories took a hard edge, focusing on drugs, the perils of reporting, etc., here they emphasize sentiment, focusing often on heroes, mostly fallen, and love, usually gone terribly awry. The opening chapter, ``Putting It in the Newspaper,'' for instance, is a litany of cases in which Buchanan effected good by reporting stories--of a missing person, a homeless woman, etc. The second chapter, a clutch of heroic dog and other animal tales, also makes an emotional pitch--delivered, however, in solid declarative prose that firms the mush (``Few four-footed heroes receive accolades. Most are unsung, many without a home''). A flurry of cases--of criminal Christmases, historic crimes, homicidal love, cop heroes, rescuers, odd occurrences (such as that of the barbiturate-soaked gunman who took 26 direct hits from cops' guns and kept shooting until a 27th round took him down)--follows, sometimes so fast and furious that impact is lost. More moving are the longer ``stories'' that close the book, particularly that of the Southerland family--not a crime chronicle at all, but a testament to one family's courage in the face of cancer. Distinctly middle-drawer files--but still a generous bonanza for crime buffs, presented by one of the sharpest writers in the field. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Reading this book is a lot like watching a police procedure TV show. Buchanan, a Miami Herald reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for general reporting in 1986, gives the details--some bloody, some heartwarming, all disturbing--of her life on the police beat. In this follow-up to her The Corpse Had a Familiar Face ( LJ 11/15/87), she draws once again a picture of the crime scene as seen through the eyes of a tough but caring reporter. Buchanan writes in a spare, lively manner with an eye to the telling detail. Readers who enjoy their crime not just true to life but true will enjoy this. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/91.
- Rebecca Wondriska, Trinity Coll. Lib., Hartford, Ct.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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