Overview
N: A Romantic Mystery opens with a bang, literally, as Aimee DuBois is awakened at three a.m. by the ringing of her phone. She lifts the receiver to her ear only to hear two loud gunshots. Somewhere in the humid New Orleans night, the handset of a pay phone dangles by its cord, picking up only the sound of footsteps running away in the dark. How did Aimee, a well-educated and independent journalist who runs an alternative newspaper, wind up on the other end of such a call? It all begins with the shooting of an eighteen-year-old boy on the steps of his high school. The only clue is a locket inscribed with the letter N. As Aimee investigates, she is befriended by a drug dealer named Strip, who is as sweet and sexy as he is dangerous. With Strip as her guide, Aimee plunges into a side of New Orleans that takes her by surprise - from Miss Margie, the forty-year-old, self-assured mother of three who controls the neighborhood drug trade, to dapper Doc Carey who runs the House of Champions, otherwise known as The New Orleans Boxing Club. As her investigation deepens, so do Aimee's feelings for Strip. Everything she's been taught to think about men like him is called into question, along with her ideas about herself and her community. N becomes more than just a clue to a killer - it becomes a clue to her own sense of self.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Edwards (Ten Seconds, 1991) expands the parameters of the literary mystery with this complicated New Orleans noir about race, identity and class. Aime Dubois, a well-educated Creole woman, runs an alternative newspaper; her curiosity about the murder of a teenager in a housing project leads her into the world of the black underclass. The narrative flashes back and forth as Aime begins an affair and investigative partnership with Strip, a sexy, sensitive crack dealer who introduces her to a lively array of dangerous potential murder suspects, including a motherly woman who controls her neighborhood's drug traffic, and a menacing minister. Edwards challenges racial, class and gender stereotypes with strong characters and palpable mood. With constant shifts in tense, point of view and typeface, he reaches into the postmodern armory of fragmentation techniques, but his prose is fluid and a story does emerge from beneath all the stylistic wrinkles. But the plot, which is peppered with coincidences, remains secondary, a vehicle with which Edwards examines New Orleans as a paradigm of cultural ambivalence and dislocation. All the literary ambition, however, leaves the narrative suspended somewhere between a novel of suspense and a novel of ideas. The result is not enough of either, and murder mystery fans will feel cheated by the end. (May) FYI: Ten Seconds was named a PW best book of 1991.Library Journal
While investigating the murder of a black teenager, small-time newspaper-owner and journalist Aimee DuBois immerses herself in the dark side of New Orleans. Her quest brings enlightenment from many sources: seductive drug dealer Strip; best friend Gray, a gay bookstore owner; concerned mother and drug-distributing Miss Margie; secretly pregnant niece Denise; and others. The author uses attention-getting mixed narrative viewpoints and rhythmic, ultimately entrancing prose to present this story-within-a-story. Recommended for most collections.Kirkus Reviews
Edwards's second novel (after Ten Seconds, 1991), a tragic romance with less mystery than the title promises, plays with the conventions of genre literature in order to tell a more profound tale of race, sex, and the meaning of identity in America.Framed as a screenplay, this clever narrative alternates the levels of discourse, from the intellectually discursive to the lingo of the New Orleans streets. Negotiating this complex landscape is Aimée DuBois, a young journalist who is part Creole drama queen and part black intellectual, but totally committed to the truth, wherever it leads. And in this intrepid little novel it takes her places she has purposely avoided most of her privileged life. Having inherited a local black newsweekly, Aimée decides one day to get the complete story of a young black man shot dead in the ghetto, another example, presumably, of black-on-black crime. In the projects, Aimée finds herself drawn to the dangerous allure of the street, discovering love with an unlikely drug dealer named Strip. Meanwhile, she also discovers much about Arthur King ("Poopie"), the drug dealer who's the subject of her search. Citizen Kanelike, she re-creates the boy's life. His young mother, his boxing trainer, his drug boss, his preacher, and his girlfriend all testify to his intelligence, his kindness, and his well- controlled killer instinct. But Aimée finds her quest complicated by personal involvement: Her niece, Denise, is pregnant with Poopie's baby. As the circle of suspects widens, from jittery drug- dealers to Aimée's upset brother (Denise's father), Aimée asks herself some hard questions about Strip as well. The meaning of Poopie's murder is both more and less than expected—the end of an existential crisis that plagues many young black men.
Yes, the title also refers to the "n" word, as Edwards brilliantly deconstructs the language of race in America, a country and culture he celebrates for its invigorating mix, much like this smart and genre-bending book.