Miami crime reporter Britt Montero investigates bizarre deaths, the unsolved sex murder of a little girl that could implicate the prime candidate in the race for governor, and a serial rapist who may have her on his list.

The recently discovered remains of a controversial kidnapper and a groom with the habit of losing his brides puts reporter Britt Montero on a collision course with danger and her one-time rival in love, Lieutenant K.C. Riley.

In one volume, the first five novels in the “irresistible series” starring a Miami crime reporter, from an Edgar Award–nominated author (Kirkus Reviews). Being a crime reporter amid the sun and sin of Miami is a full-time job, one that Cuban-born Britt Montero does better than anyone else. But when you get that close to the criminal underworld, things have a way of sucking you in. In these five novels of suspense, New York Times–bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Edna Buchanan sets her heroine loose on some of the most highly charged crimes in Miami, and reminds readers that you don’t necessarily have to live to make the front page . . . Includes: Contents Under Pressure; Miami, It’s Murder; Suitable for Framing; Act of Betrayal; Margin of Error “[An] extremely likable heroine.” —Publishers Weekly

An explosive new novel set in murderous Miami, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Herald reporter. Buchanan brings her years of experience and her unflinching eye to bear on the story of a Cuban-American crime reporter who puts her life on the line to expose a police coverup in the wake of a black football star's suspicious death. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

"Like all things good and bad in the world, it began with a woman..." And so begins the first chapter of Edna Buchanan's Cold Case Squad, a new suspense novel that features a special homicide unit that breathes new life into old cases. A man and a woman are shot dead at a strip club in Miami Beach. A few hours later, an explosion in a garage rocks a child's birthday party and burns a father of three to death. The murders go unsolved and the fire is chalked up to an accident. But was it an accident? Twelve years later, a blonde walks in to the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad -- which Buchanan fans will remember from The Ice Maiden -- and complains that she's been seeing her husband everywhere she goes. Trouble is, he's been dead for twelve years. In Buchanan's characteristic voice, "Some guys just don't know when to let go." As the Cold Case Squad unearths the details of the strip club deaths and the dead or missing father -- as well as the unsolved killings of a series of little old ladies -- readers get to know the three cops and their boss: veteran homicide detective Sergeant Craig Burch, whose marriage has turned into a case he can't solve; Detective Sam Stone, for whom the past will always be a mystery; Detective Pete Nazario, airlifted out of Cuba during "Operation Pedro Pan" in the 1960s; and Lieutenant K. C. Riley, for whom one case will never grow cold. Edna Buchanan has been thrilling readers since her Pulitzer Prize-winning stint as a crime reporter for The Miami Herald. The Chicago Tribune once raved that "few writers can touch Buchanan," to which The Washington Post Book World seemed to respond, "I doubt if anyone else is doing it better." In Cold Case Squad, Edna Buchanan, the woman the Los Angeles Daily News calls "the Queen of crime," delivers unlikely killers, near-perfect murders, and her most suspenseful novel yet.

A chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of reporter Britt Montero forever. The encounter is at Miami's morgue, where the unidentified stranger lies dead. His unusual old scars capture her curiosity-the dead man clearly had a tale to tell. This thief, who was accidentally electrocuted, may be the key that unlocks the long-sought secrets of a sensational cold murder mystery unsolved for more than fourteen years. Sunny and Ricky, teenagers on a Christmas Eve first date, were abducted, a shocking crime that was never solved despite a gigantic manhunt, a huge reward, and an outraged community. Frustrated police called the lack of leads eerie. Unnatural. Against all the laws of homicide and human nature. Now Britt wants the story, and she isn't the only one seeking answers. Sunny survived, the lone witness to that terrible night so long ago. But the reclusive Ice Maiden, now an artist and sculptor estranged from her wealthy family, is not talking and the killer's trail vanished long ago, like footprints in melting snow. Cold Case Squad Sargeant Craig Burch wants the killer. But as the Miami News reporter and the veteran homicide cop investigate the old outrage, they learn that sometimes the cost of justice is too high. When you start to turn over rocks, something ugly sometimes slithers out. Monstrous evil from the past emerges to overtake a whole new generation of innocent victims as deadly passions are reawakened and mortal fears resurface. For Burch, whose elite unit breathes new life into cold murder cases, the investigation strikes too close to home, reigniting his own private obsessions. And Britt, in the wake of national tragedy, is haunted, both awake and asleep, by the persistent ghost of a doomed, lost girl, perhaps a warning of a new tragedy to come. Britt meets the Ice Maiden, nearly freezes to death, and then the trail heats up as the sins of the fathers begin to strike down the innocent. A stone-cold killer out of her past is stalking the Ice Maiden again. Nothing is what it seems. And the inferno is yet to come.... Edna Buchanan, a born storyteller, combines her trademark wit, grit, and tension in The Ice Maiden, a narrative alive with Miami's blistering heat and high-octane atmosphere.

This classic by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author is her nonfiction masterpiece--a tale of life and death on Miami's streets, which she covered for 18 years for "The Miami Herald." Reissue.