In her book “In the Mouth of the Wolf,” Katherine Corcoran investigates the murder of a fellow reporter in Mexico.

Corcoran offers a “chilling and nuanced look at press freedom in a country persistently rated among the most dangerous in the world for journalists,” Mark Bowden said in a review for The New York Times.

Regina Martínez was beaten and strangled in her home in Xalapa in April 2012. She was a fiercely independent woman, 48 years old, who had exposed human rights abuses and corruption in her home state of Veracruz for decades.

Corcoran, who was then the Mexico and Central America bureau chief for The Associated Press, had never met Martínez apart from one phone conversation, but she felt a deep connection.

Both women had begun their careers in the 1980s, inspired by the role of journalists in exposing government betrayal and failure.

For Corcoran, the work had led to ever more exciting and lucrative opportunities. She was managing a team investigating extrajudicial killings by the Mexican Army.

Her work was important and exciting, and with her AP credentials and American citizenship, plus vacations home, she could pursue it in relative safety and comfort.