The Viaduct

Publishers Weekly

Like Edwards's Mali Anderson cop series (Do or Die; If I Should Die; etc.), this colorful if predictable stand-alone thriller is set in Harlem. It is 1972, and Marin Taylor, a 30-year-old Vietnam vet who survived (and relives in his nightmares) some of the war's worst moments, has a good job as a printer and a loving wife, Margaret, who is about to give birth to their first child. But Marin loses his job, and then is mugged for his final paycheck on a bridge over the Harlem River on his way home. He manages to toss one of the robbers to his death-and thus begins a vendetta against him and his family by the survivor, Conroy Henderson, the younger and less stable of a team of brothers. Egged on by threats from a gang lord who paid for his brother's funeral and now wants the money back, Henderson loses his already fragile grip on reality, and kidnaps Margaret's baby daughter from the hospital. The police think both the mugging and the baby's disappearance are drug related and don't push the case, so it's up to Marin and his Vietnam buddy, Chance, a resourceful postman, to get the infant back. Edwards is able to conjure up the nightlife outside a Harlem bar with period resonance-"high class stops where top-down Caddies and Buick Deuce 'n a Quarters pulled to the curb. Money men behind the wheel with women so fine, you get arrested just for stealin' a glance"-but evocative descriptions can't make up for the plodding plot and flat denouement. (Dec. 30) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Vietnam vet Marin Taylor loses his job and then his severance pay when he is left for dead by a mugger. But there's even greater sorrow in this tale of struggle and revenge from Edwards (Do or Die): even as he recovers, his baby daughter is kidnapped. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Drear but gripping wade through dire nights in Harlem. Edwards abandons her series featuring ex-cop Mali Anderson (Do or Die, 2000, etc.) for a dark-charcoal tale that lets her dig her arms into the 1970s, a time before Anderson's tour of duty. All told, The Viaduct is a success, but many will flinch at its depressing contents and lowlife characters. Vietnam vet Marin Taylor loses his job when the print shop where he works closes. On his way home with four weeks' severance pay, he stops at a bar, worries how his very pregnant wife Margaret will take this news of his shift to unemployment insurance. Crossing the ten-story-high Harlem viaduct, he's mugged by brothers Conroy and Tito Henderson. He tosses Tito to his death over the low rail but is stabbed twice by Conroy, who escapes with the vet's wallet. This incident prompts traumatic memories of a tragic event during Marin's stint in Vietnam; its piecemeal revelation throughout the novel adds to suspense but doesn't pay off as richly as it might have had Edwards pushed more deeply into its horror. Smarting for revenge, Conroy has his dimwit girlfriend Sadie steal Margaret's baby the day after her delivery. Meanwhile, Conroy goes into hiding, and his mother must hit up vicious loan shark Savoy for money to bury Tito. Readers will relish the many beatings thuggish Conroy takes during the story; for this creep, crime doesn't pay awfully well, not even a faulty kidnapping that has Savoy fearing a federal rap and ready to crush Conroy if he doesn't quickly pay off Mama's loan and mounting interest. Brainless Conroy can't even put his ransom scheme in motion, since Sadie has run off with the baby. Much of the story feels like a nighttime slogthrough rain-drenched streets reminiscent of Dostoevsky's The Devils, although its bottom-feeder dialogue occasionally sounds thin. Still, freed from some strictures of crime fiction, Edwards produces her darkest, most compelling work.