Nobody Lives Forever

January 30, 1990
Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter, columnist for the Miami Herald and author of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face , Buchanan displays deft story tell ing skill in this hard-hitting police procedural, her first novel. Spanning a month of Miami days and nights, the plot centers around homicide sergeant Rick Barrish, a poised and handsome young cop who has recently ended a romance with fellow officer Mary Ellen Dustin and taken up with young Laurel Trevelyn. After describing a series of seemingly unrelated crimes that occur on the first night of the full moon, Buchanan clues readers into Laurel's multiple personality disorder, a secret that will ultimately tie together the assorted subplots here. Murders calculated and unprovoked; drug busts; robberies; the tensions between cops and criminals, rich and poor; and matters of love and hate all play out in Miami's mean, middle-class or manicured neighborhoods. As Laurel's various selves wage an accelerating war for control, wreaking havoc and tragedy for Rick, Mary Ellen and their other partner, Detective Jim Ransom, Buchanan conjures up a city both ordinary and exotic, and as vivid and colorful as her characters.