Do or Die: A Mali Anderson Mystery

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)