If I Should Die

A working-class neighborhood in Harlem is brought vividly to life in Edwards's hard-hitting second novel (In the Shadow of the Peacock). Mali Anderson, who was fired from the NYPD after slugging a fellow officer who had insulted her, lives in her childhood home with her father and orphaned nephew. On her way to pick up her nephew from a rehearsal with the world-famous Uptown Children's Chorus, Mali thwarts an attempt to kidnap a young chorus member; but she is too late to save her friend, the Chorus's director, who is fatally shot in the incident. Although she feels the investigation of both the murder and the attempted abduction is in good hands with two cops she trusts (one of whom she would like to get to know much better), Mali picks up some information on her own. Her involvement intensifies after her best friend, Deborah, a librarian whom Mali had asked to probe the background of the Chorus's director of development, is attacked in her apartment. Spurred by Deborah's nearly fatal attack and undeterred by anonymous phone calls she is receiving, Mali solicits help from her cop friends, after which the phone calls become more threatening, her father is attacked and her house is ransacked. Edwards's Harlem, with its beauty parlors and jazz clubs, family homes and burned-out crack houses, offers a vibrant, varied backdrop for this gritty tale and its sharp-edged, appealing heroine. (May)