Books Journalists Should Read, Not Really

Never Let Them See You Cry: More from Miami, America's Hottest Beat by Edna Buchanan


This book is a continuation of Buchanan's life as a police beat reporter with the Miami Herald and all of the strange tales she experienced in America's Hottest Beat. A reminder: I am an Edna Buchanan fan.

Buchanan wrote this book after the publication of her first novel, so this book is likely designed to play on the popularity of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, her first nonfiction book about life as a police beat reporter in Miami.

And Buchanan doesn't disappoint, providing some of the trademark razor-sharp writing and observations that keep her the reigning queen of the police beat despite more than two decades of absence from her domain.

In describing a victim of crime:
"Ethel Lottman, a no-nonsense Miami Beach widow, seventy-two, handled her heart condition, her arthritis and a homicidal maniac with the same aplomb."

A description of the new South Beach:
"Sleepy South Beach, once famous for its senior citizens, now throbs through the soft nights with a healthy and and youthful energy, more lusty and alive than it has ever been."

While this book covers familiar ground in stories of murder and mayhem in Miami, it does break new ground. The last chapter also goes into Buchanan's struggle to embrace her new life as a novelist and drop her old journalistic habits.

This book marks the end of Buchanan's nonfiction, journalistic writing as she becomes what she had always dreamed of--a writer. A great loss for journalism.

The Corpse Had a Familiar Face was vintage Edna Buchanan at her journalistic best. Never Let Them See You Cry doesn't reach that level of journalistic technique in writing, analysis and reporting. It does foreshadow the crime novel career of Buchanan, one that is still going.

Never Let Them See You Cry is a must read if you are an Edna Buchanan fan. Otherwise, stick with The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. It provides more journalistic juice from the world's best police beat reporter, which is a crying shame.