Edna Buchanan

Edna Buchanan is an American author and journalist. She is most known for the film adaptation The Corpse Had a Familiar Face (1994), Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan (1995), and Nobody Lives Forever (1998).

Edna Buchanan was born in New Jersey. She wanted to be a writer since she was four years old. Buchanan attended Montclair State College and took a creative writing course.

Before moving to Miami, Edna started her career as a police reporter for a small newspaper in Ohio. In Florida, she became a reporter for the Miami Beach Sun in the late 1960s. In 1970, Miami Herald hired her as a general assignment and police-beat reporter. At this time, Miami was becoming the center of the international drug trade.

Buchanan gained a reputation as an expert on crime reporting, and her coverage of high-profile cases such as the Mariel boatlift and the Cocaine Cowboys era of the 1980s. She won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting "for her versatile and consistently excellent police beat reporting."

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 focused on writing books. She has since published over 16 novels, many of which are based on her experiences as a crime reporter. The main character in her crime mystery series is Britt Montero.

Her book Miami, It's Murder was nominated for an Edgar Award in 1995.

Buchanan is featured in the 2018 documentary film The Last Resort about Miami Beach, directed by Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch.