Creating an Editor Role and Reusing the Admin Menu and Overlay in Drupal 7
Assuming you have the Administration menu module enabled, under People > Permissions check the following boxes:

Administration menu


Access administration menu


Node


Bypass content access control (note though, this gives the user permission to delete all content; if you don't desire this then you can micro-manage the permission on the individual content types, it's more box checking but also more secure)


System


Use the administration pages and help
View the administrative theme


Those are the core permissions that you need to have in order for a role to view the administration menu as well as menu items pertinent to managing site content.

Now, in order to make sure that the role is more or less secure, I would always uncheck every box whose label begins with "Administer...", as these permissions would be for administration roles.