mystery

From Murder Scene to Murde3r Scene: Crime Writer Edna Buchanan

Bill Thompson

Edna Buchanan joined the Miami Herald in 1973, working the police beat. And she was good at it. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for her reporting.

By the late 1980s, she had turned to fiction writing, The real life stories she had covered became the raw material for her fiction.

And it turned out she was really good at that, too. Many of her books became best sellers, and a couple were turned into movies.

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But she also wrote several nonfiction books, including one in 1992 called Never Let Them See You Cry. That’s when she and I had one of our several conversations over the years.

So here now, from 1992, Edna Buchanan

Edna Buchanan is 85 now, and still lives in Florida.

Rita Mae Brown: Bestselling Author and Pioneering LGBTQ 0Advocate

Bill Thompson
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Since her college days in the early 1960s Rita Mae Brown has been an advocate for the LGBTQ community. Long before it was known by that shorthand descriptor..

She was also active in the anti-war movement, the feminist cause, and the lesbian liberation effort.

She holds two doctorates, in literature and political science.

Get your copy of Rita Mae Brown’s book

But she is also widely known for her fiction, her “cozy” mysteries as well as her standalone novels. Her book Rubyfruit Jungle, published in 1973, has become a literary classic.

I met her in 1993, when we had the first of what would be many conversations in the years that followed. We talked about her novel Venus Envy, the story of a young woman who makes one of those life choices that changes everything – and not always for the better,

So here now, from 1993. Rita Mae Brown.

Rita Mae Brown Is 79. She lives in Virginia.

From Insider to Author: Susan Ford’s White House Thriller

Bill Thompson

Susan Ford was 17 when her father, Gerald Ford, became the nation’s 38th president, and she moved into the White House.

The youngest of the Fords’ children, and the only daughter, Susan acclimated to her new surroundings, absorbing details about the history and protocols of the First Family’s home.

And years later, she drew upon that intimate insider’s knowledge to write fiction, a mystery set in the White House, complete with scandal and intrigue. .

Susan Ford at 17

In a nod to her real life profession, and that of her book’s main character, Ford called her book Double Exposure.

And alongside all the elements of a good, page-turning mystery Ford gave her readers some delectable tidbits about the White House and its mysteries.

Get your copy of Susan Ford’s book

So here now, from 2002, Susan Ford.

Susan Ford will be 67 in July. She lives in Texas.

Linda Fairstein

Bill Thompson

As they say on a popular TV show, sexually based crimes are considered especially heinous.

That’s why, in the 1980s prosecutor Linda Fairstein was instrumental in helping establish the first sex crimes unit in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. It later inspired the TV series “Law & Order Special Victims Unit.”.

In the1990s, Fairstein diversified her talents, writing a series of bestselling crime novels whose main character was a sex crimes prosecutor named Alexandra Cooper.

I first met Linda Fairstein in 1996, upon publication of her very first Alex Cooper novel, a book called Final Jeopardy.

So here now, from 1996, Linda Fairstein .

Linda Fairstein celebrated her 76th birthday last week. She has not written an Alex Cooper book since 2019, when she became the center of controversy after the Netflix series “when They See US” revealed some dark information about the Central Park jogger case that she prosecuted in the 1980s.

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