jjares reviewed on 6/8/2020 + 3275 more book reviews

CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE is the first book in Edna Buchanan's Britt Montero series. Before discussing the plot of this book, I need to mention that Edna Buchanan won a Pulitzer Prize for her work as a crime reporter at the Miami Herald in the late 1980s.

Boy, this book seems to have been taken from the pages of today's newspapers (no pun intended). The sound of the rapidly changing newsroom has the sound of reality. Our daughter was a newspaper reporter for 15 years and we saw and heard exactly the themes and concerns that she described in her daily work on a major city newspaper. The book is only dated by the means of communication the reporters used in this book -- pay phones and pagers. Otherwise, everything is accurate.

D. Wayne Hudson, a retired football hero and local city "good guy" dies after a chase away from police. When Montero is working on the story, she notices that the police are wary and the facts on the reports don't jive with what seems to have happened. Eventually, Montero breaks the story that points to police brutality. However, it is brutality with a horrible twist. The action is continuous and I couldn't put the book down. It is a great story; I look forward to her next stories.

Britt Montero Series
** 1.Contents Under Pressure (1992)
2. Miami, It's Murder (1994)
3.Suitable for Framing (1995)

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