You Only Die Twice

"I had overheard the initial radio transmission on the 'floater' while working on a story at Miami Beach police headquarters. My ears had perked up. My name is Britt Montero, and I cover the police beat in this city where everything is exaggerated, where colors are too vivid to be real, where ugly is uglier, beautiful is breathtaking, and passions run high. Every day on this job, I see new faces. Many are dead. My mission is to chronicle their stories and preserve them permanently-on the pages of the newspaper of record, in our files, and on our consciousness, forever." It's been nearly 10 years since department store heir and scion R.J. Jordan was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal murder of his wife Kaithlin, whose body has never been found. Now as Jordan sits on Death Row, counting down the weeks to his execution, a staggering discovery on Miami Beach is about to give him a second lease on life... Ace crime reporter Britt Montero, responding to a radio transmission overheard at police headquarters, is among the first on the scene when the floater washes up-young, blonde, beautiful, wearing nothing more than a single Tiffany earring and a diamond wedding ring. There's evidence of a struggle, but not much more to go on, until a standard fingerprint check tells a different tale. For this is no ordinary floater. In fact, this floater is about to make front page headlines-just like she did when she was murdered by her playboy husband almost a decade ago. Because this floater is none other than Kaithlin Jordan, and it's clear that's she's been very much alive and living the good life, at least until the waves washed in her body just a few short days ago. But what brought this mysterious woman back to Miami, with all of its notoriety, heartaches and broken dreams? And why, after so many years of hiding, would Kaithlin risk it all to return to a city where so many people would remember her face and her name? For Britt Montero, the answers to those questions will reveal a story far sadder than the torrid tales of infidelity and domestic violence that cost Kaithlin's husband 10 years of the hardest kind of time. Too bad the truth won't be easy to find. Because in a city where money talks, and "don't ask, don't tell" is the rule of the game, Britt's getting nowhere fast, although the answers are closer than she ever imagined. One thing's certain. When it comes to the tragic life and death of Kaithlin Jordan, everyone who knew her has something to hide: the exonerated husband who swore all along that he didn't kill her; his socialite mother, who hated Kaithlin for ruining the lives of her husband and her son; the down-on-his-luck lawyer whose newfound fortune is inextricably tied to Kaithlin's demise; and even Britt's mother, who knew Kaithlin well as a young girl and then as a young bride. But for all of their secrets, do any of them really know what happened to Kaithlin since the day she disappeared, or who'd want to kill her-the second time? In You Only Die Twice, seventh in a series of acclaimed Britt Montero mysteries, Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter Edna Buchanan brings back her alter ego in a modern-day interpretation of Double Indemnity that will keep readers guessing until the last page is turned.