From Publishers Weekly
Buchanan, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986, has been the police reporter for the Miami Herald for 16 years and has covered some 5000 murder cases. Born and raised in New Jersey (which she hated), she got to Miami (which she loves) by accident and almost as casually got into the newspaper business. She tends to be hard-nosed about crime and criminals: her stories here range from a case which set off three days of rioting in Miami's black community, to a father who shot his comatose daughter in a hospital. Buchanan writes in pure journalese, with short sentences and short paragraphs,and she does it superbly. Literary Guild alternate. Author tour.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
For 15 years, this Pulitzer Prize-winning police reporter for the Miami Herald has covered murder and rape, drug deals and robbery, Miami and vice, and she tells her story here. Her prose is spare but somehow crammed with detail and description. "If a man is shot for playing the same song on the jukebox too many times, I've got to name that tune," she says. She is outspoken, matter-of-fact, funny, frequently tough. Her best day "is the one where I can write a lead that will cause a reader at his breakfast table to spit up his coffee, clutch at his heart, and shout, `My God, Martha, did you read this?' " Her book will make you do just that. Jo Cates, Poynter Inst. for Media Studies Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
