Edna Buchanan never met a corpse she didn't like.

During her 20 years as a crime reporter for The Miami Herald, Buchanan covered more than 5,000 violent deaths, including 3,000 homicides. It wasn't a morbid fascination with their deaths; instead, it was an unquenchable curiosity about their lives that instantly drew the reporter to the dearly departed.

Buchanan's fascination with life's final chapter prompted her true-crime best-seller, "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face," in 1987. Two years later, with a Pulitzer Prize for crime reporting on her mantle, she left the news beat to pursue fiction on a full-time basis.

In 1990 she was nominated for an Edgar Award for her first novel, "Nobody Lives Forever." Two years later Buchanan introduced readers to her scrappy alter ego, enterprising Cuban-American reporter Britt Montero, in "Contents Under Pressure."

In the years since, Buchanan has become the grande dame of Florida crime noir. With nine books in the Britt Montero canon, including her latest, "Love Kills," and three installments in her new Cold Case Files series, Buchanan has become both a fixture on the best-seller lists and the literary ambassador of her beloved Miami Beach, her longtime home and favorite novel setting.

Bankrate tracked Buchanan down at her island home on the shores of Biscayne Bay for a chat about life, money and dead Colombians in her trunk. 

Bankrate: You started in the newspaper business back in the rough-and-tumble "Front Page" days.

Edna Buchanan: Yes, and boy, do I miss the newsroom. I think I'm still suffering from the effects of second-hand smoke! I never smoked, but my whole family chain-smoked, and everybody in the newsroom smoked. People I interviewed would sit down next to me, pull out a cigar and say, "Mind if I smoke?" I always said no because I was hoping to pick their brain and didn't want to offend them.

Bankrate: The bottle in the desk drawer gang, right?

Buchanan: Oh yeah. My first newspaper job, we had a whole bunch of drunks in the newsroom. One of them was such a good writer but he was a secret drinker and he always had a bottle in his desk drawer or under his jacket or stashed in the pressroom. I sat behind him and one day, I noticed he just slumped back in his chair, the phone dangling from his hand, passed out. I went over and picked up the phone and said hello, and it was the mayor of Miami Beach, wondering what had happened to this reporter who just sort of faded out. I don't think it's anywhere near as much fun now; in fact, it seems smarmy.