Edna Buchanan (née Rydzik, born March 16, 1939)About Edna Buchanan Fantastic Fiction. Retrieved December 27, 2008. is an American
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
and writer best known for her crime mystery novels. She won the 1986
Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting
The Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting is a Pulitzer Prize awarded for a distinguished example of breaking news, local reporting on news of the moment. It has been awarded since 1953 under several names:
*From 1953 to 1963: Pulitzer Pri ...
"for her versatile and consistently excellent police beat reporting.""The 1986 Pulitzer Prize Winner in General News Reporting,"Pulitzer.org retrieved August 12, 2019.
Early life
Buchanan was born in
Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson ( ) is the largest city in and the county seat of Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Edna Buchanan Biography (biography.com). In high school she worked in a coat factory and after graduating she worked, along with her mother, at a
Western Electric
The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', February 17, 1986. She attended
Montclair State College
Montclair State University (MSU) is a public research university in Montclair, New Jersey, with parts of the campus extending into Little Falls. As of fall 2018, Montclair State was, by enrollment, the second largest public university in New ...
, where she took a
creative writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...
course and was encouraged to become a writer. She and her mother took a vacation to
Miami Beach
Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on natural and man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter of which ...
and, according to Buchanan, she knew as soon as she walked off the plane that she wanted to leave Paterson.
Career
Buchanan began her career writing for the ''Miami Beach Sun'', covering crime, local politics, society, celebrity interviews and occasionally letters to the editor. In 1973, she began working as a police beat reporter for the ''
Miami Herald
The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a city in western Miami-Dade County and the Miami metropolitan area, several miles west of Downtown Miami. In 1986 she won the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...
in General News Reporting.
Her book ''Miami, It's Murder'' was nominated for an
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor the bes ...
in 1995.
Buchanan's autobiographical book ''The Corpse Had A Familiar Face'' inspired two TV movies starring
Elizabeth Montgomery
Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery (April 15, 1932 – May 18, 1995) was an American actress whose career spanned five decades in film, stage, and television. She is best remembered for her leading role as the witch Samantha Stephens on the televisi ...
: ''The Corpse Had a Familiar Face'' (1994) and ''Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan'' (1995). Her novel ''Nobody Lives Forever'' was made into a TV movie in 1998.
Buchanan was embarrassed in 1990 when she was quoted extensively in the book ''Blue Thunder: How the Mafia Owned and Finally Murdered Cigarette Boat King
Donald Aronow
Donald Joel Aronow (March 3, 1927 – February 3, 1987) was an American designer, builder and racer of the famous Magnum Marine, Cary, Cigarette, Donzi, and Formula speedboats. He built speedboats for the Shah of Iran, Charles Keating, Rober ...
'', by Thomas Burdick and Charlene Mitchell.
Burdick ... led her to believe that he was seeking only background information, never used a tape recorder or took notes, asked her to hypothesize about people and situations, then quoted her as if she were stating fact.
According to Buchanan, she tried to have her name and the quotes removed from the book after she read the galley proofs, but she was told by the publisher that it was too late.Jerry Bledsoe, ''The Washington Post'', January 18, 1991.
She was profiled in an article by
Calvin Trillin
Calvin Marshall Trillin (born 5 December 1935) is an American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist and novelist. He is a winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor (2012) and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts ...
in 1986 for
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
, which was included in an anthology of his work entitled Killings.
Buchanan is featured in the 2018 documentary film '' The Last Resort.''
Books
Fiction
*''Nobody Lives Forever'' (1990)
*''
Naked Came the Manatee
''Naked Came the Manatee'' () is a mystery thriller parody novel published in 1996. It is composed of thirteen chapters, each written by a different Miami-area writer. It was originally published as a serial in the ''Miami Herald's'' ''Tropic'' m ...
'' ( Putnam, 1996), by Buchanan and 12 others
*''Pulse'' (1998)
*''Legally Dead'' (2008)
*''A Dark and Lonely Place'' (2011)
Britt Montero Series
* '' Contents Under Pressure'' (1992)
* ''Miami, It's Murder'' (1994)
* ''Suitable for Framing'' (1995)
* ''Act of Betrayal'' (1996)
* ''Margin of Error'' (1997)
* ''Garden of Evil'' (1999)
* ''You Only Die Twice'' (2001)
* ''The Ice Maiden'' (2002)
*''Love Kills'' (2007)
Craig Burch Series
* ''Cold Case Squad'' (2004)
* ''Shadows'' (2005)
Nonfiction
*''Carr, Five Years of Rape and Murder: from the personal account of Robert Frederick Carr III'', 1979
*''The Corpse Had a Familiar Face: Covering Miami, America's Hottest Beat'', 1987
*''Never Let Them See You Cry: More from Miami, America's Hottest Beat'', 1992
*''Vice: Life and Death on the Streets of Miami'', 1992