Detective Fiction, African Americans - Fiction & Literature, Crimes - Fiction, Multicultural Detectives - Fiction, Women Detectives - Fiction, Occupations - Fiction, Character Types - Fiction
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Overview
A serial killer stalks Harlem's Strivers' Row...On a sweltering Harlem summer night, ex-cop Mali Anderson steps out to celebrate her friend Claudine's divorce from a handsome, cheating deadbeat who couldn't keep his fists out of her face. But Claudine doesn't show up for their dinner. Instead, she is found brutally murdered in her elegant home just off Strivers' Row, and Mali has no doubt Claudine's ex did it. Despite his threats, she can't keep out of the investigation. Especially when another woman meets the same savage, bizarre fate....
The two murders are just the start of a trail that leads street-smart Mali through the trash-talking and wise philosophizing of barbershops, beauty parlors, and bars...and toward a cunning killer whose homegrown hatred is zeroing in on Mali herself.
From the Paperback edition.
Synopsis
A serial killer stalks Harlem's Strivers' Row... On a sweltering Harlem summer night, ex-cop Mali Anderson steps out to celebrate her friend Claudine's divorce from a handsome, cheating deadbeat who couldn't keep his fists out of her face. But Claudine doesn't show up for their dinner. Instead, she is found brutally murdered in her elegant home just off Strivers' Row, and Mali has no doubt Claudine's ex did it. Despite his threats, she can't keep out of the investigation. Especially when another woman meets the same savage, bizarre fate.... The two murders are just the start of a trail that leads street-smart Mali through the trash-talking and wise philosophizing of barbershops, beauty parlors, and bars...and toward a cunning killer whose homegrown hatred is zeroing in on Mali herself.Editorials
Chicago Tribune
Excellent...Edwards expertly creates characters who leap to instant, long-remembered life.Publishers Weekly -
Mali Anderson, formerly of the NYPD, finds herself investigating a murder close to home when a longtime friend is the victim of a brutal slaying in Harlem. Mali believes that her friend Claudine has been murdered by Claudine's abusive ex-husband, James Thomas, whom Mali has always mistrusted. Despite the doubts of Mali's police detective boyfriend, Tad Honeywell, Mali's suspicion is reinforced when a second victim, also linked to James, is killed in the same manner (strangulation with piano wire). Or is a sadistic serial killer on the loose in Harlem? When Mali is sent to the hospital after someone tries to run her down, she vows to solve the case. Edwards's supporting cast, which includes Mali's jazz musician father, fleshes out the story, which is told in a mixed first- and third-person narration, in the manner of James Patterson's Alex Cross novels. Many of the scenes are set in the restaurants and nightclubs of modern-day Harlem, brought vividly to life. Weakening the tale is the sad but stereotypical background of the murderer and an easily foreseen ending. The intriguing look offered inside its unusual locale makes this mystery, third in the series (after A Toast Before Dying), worth reading despite its predictability. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
Jettisoning the mystery that was the weakest part of A Toast Before Dying (1998), Edwards returns to Harlem a third time to set Mali Anderson against a serial killer. The case begins, at least for Mali, when her late sister Benin's friend, high-school teacher Claudine Hastings, fails to show up for a dinner date with Mali and Elizabeth Jackson, the lawyer friend handling Mali's lawsuit against the city for tossing her off the NYPD. The late Claudine has been strangled with piano wire, then left with breakfast cereal sprinkled over her body. The obvious suspect is her soon-to-be-ex James Thomas, who beat her for the first year of their marriage and has lived apart from her for years two and three. And when James's ex-girlfriend, postal clerk Marie Taylor, escapes his abuse via a similar length of piano wire, Mali's ex-colleagues are hot to track him down. But he tracks Mali down instead, flattening her in a hit-and-run that leads ultimately to a bloody showdown, but does nothing to stop the killings. If the murderer wasn't James, muses Mali, why did the victims trust him enough to let them into their apartments? It's a good question, but one every reader has known the answer to since the opening chapter: because he's a misfit grocery deliveryman whose horrific background has made him kill before and won't let him quit till he goes after Mali. By-the-numbers plotting and unmemorable characters take the edge off this middlebrow tour of Harlem.Book Details
Published
February 2, 2011
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pages
240
ISBN
9780307785329