Britt Montero

On the police beat for her Miami newspaper, Cuban-born Britt Montero has a lot on her hands. She's investigating a series of bizarre deaths involving sex, electrocution, and freshly poured concrete. As if that isn't enough, there's the long-unsolved murder of a young girl that may implicate the frontrunner in the governor's race. And at the same time, she's on the trail of a serial rapist-who targets her in retaliation for her stories . . .

When Miami crime reporter Britt Montero reports a missing teenager, she discovers that the case may be related to a string of unsolved disappearances. As Britt delves into the baffling case, an old mystery opens new wounds: she unexpectedly meets two men who knew her deceased father-who was executed long ago in a Cuban jail. Through them, Britt learns that he left a diary identifying the man who betrayed him. But the diary isn't easily possessed: Anyone who finds it seems to be marked for murder. At the height of a terrifying category five hurricane, Britt needs to face the man who betrayed her father in order to uncover more than one truth, but her hunger for justice may turn her into the next victim.

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 . . .

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.