Do or Die

The prime suspect is a low-life pimp with a grudge against Starr. But then the pimp stops a bullet — and everyone suspects Starr's devastated father of exacting his own revenge. Mali vows to use her experience as a former cop to find the real killer. Her search will take her in and out of the "three B's" of Harlem: the beauty shops, barbershops, and the bars. But it will also lead Mali directly into the path of a killer — one who, if not stopped, will almost surely strike again....

A songbird is silenced ... by murder.

With her soulful voice and delicate beauty, Starr Hendrix seemed destined to live up to her name and hit it big as a jazz singer. But her career ended before it began, and Mali's father offered Starr a second chance by giving her top billing as singer for his popular jazz band's latest show. Mali isn't surprised when Starr doesn't show — but everyone is shocked when the troubled woman is found savagely murdered....

The prime suspect is a low-life pimp with a grudge against Starr. But then the pimp stops a bullet — and everyone suspects Starr's devastated father of exacting his own revenge. Mali vows to use her experience as a former cop to find the real killer. Her search will take her in and out of the "three B's" of Harlem: the beauty shops, barbershops, and the bars. But it will also lead Mali directly into the path of a killer — one who, if not stopped, will almost surely strike again....

Publishers Weekly

No longer a New York cop, Mali Anderson, the heroine of three previous adventures (If I Should Die, etc.), fights for her man and the truth behind a young singer's violent death in this highly atmospheric if overly ambitious novel. Starr Hendrix survived drug abuse and the lure of prostitution to sing jazz with her father, Ozzie, and Mali's dad in the nightclubs of Harlem. When somebody kills Starr by slashing her throat, her onetime supplier and would-be pimp, Short Change, is the most likely suspect, until he dies and the despondent Ozzie vanishes. At the same time, Mali, fresh from a memorable jazz cruise aboard the QE2, has a sexy new lover in cop Tad Honeywell. Ensuring that Tad stay faithful requires Mali to tangle with Chrissie, a local trollop in too-tight clothes, whose straying third husband might have been the last man in Starr's short, sad life. Edwards's fluid prose, punctuated by historical and architectural asides that illuminate present-day black Harlem, is impressive, but a fine style isn't enough here. Tad and Chrissie are respectively too hunky and too vampish to be credible. The constant cuts to shipboard passion and the endless jazz name-dropping don't advance the story much, and the more somber narrative sections, where Mali meets Short Change's current stable of working girls, don't expand the suspect pool. Edwards has done better and should do so again. Agent, Barbara Lowenstein. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Grace F. Edwards was born and raised in Harlem and now lives in Brooklyn. She is the author of the novel In the Shadow of the Peacock, and of three previous Mali Anderson mysteries, If I Should Die, A Toast Before Dying (a featured alternate selection of the Mystery Guild), and No Time to Die.