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)
