Amazon.com Review
Georgia Barnett is a Chicago television news reporter with ideals but no illusions. She knows the pressures and expectations of her highly politicized profession, and as an African American woman, she recognizes that her work will inevitably be judged within the constructs of race and gender. When a young black girl disappears after identifying a drive-by shooter's car on live TV during an interview with Georgia, the reporter is caught between guilt-ridden responsibility for the child's fate and her awareness that the powers-that-be want nothing to do with another story from the projects.
Detective Doug Eckart understands that all too well, and it's not long before Georgia and Doug join forces to find Butter and bring her abductors to justice. Their search takes them through Chicago's South Side, a once-proud neighborhood brought to its knees by drugs, violence, and apathy. As Georgia moves gingerly through the minefields of gangland territory, she becomes both the pursuer and the pursued; treachery and danger are the hallmarks of this bleak world.
Georgia is immensely likeable: her quick wit and no-nonsense feminism may remind readers of another African American mystery heroine, Charlotte Carter's sassy, brassy sax player Nanette Hayes (Drumsticks, Rhode Island Red). Her personality and sarcastic asides buoy a novel handicapped by an illogical plot that unfolds at an often glacial pace; author Ardella Garland (nom de plume of novelist Yolanda Joe) may have spent 12 years as a CBS news writer, but this work lacks the suspense of late-breaking news. To readers captivated by Georgia's voice, however, such shortcomings will no doubt be minor, easily forgiven offenses. --Kelly Flynn
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
African-American TV journalist Georgia Barnett makes her debut in a mystery chiefly notable for its heroine's sassy sense of humor. At the scene of a South Side Chicago gang killing, Georgia interviews on camera an important eyewitness, a little black girl named Butter. After Butter is kidnapped, Georgia's guilt drives her to seek the girl's abductors. Helping and hindering in this hunt are a local preacher, Georgia's superiors at the television station and handsome cop Doug Eckart, with whom she quickly falls into a predictable, innuendo-laced give and take. The author (Falling Leaves of Ivy; Bebe's by Golly Wow, etc.) is less adept at plotting a mystery than she is at presenting an overly knowing black romantic fiction reminiscent of Terry McMillan. Which of the two rival gangs, the Rock Disciples or the Gangster Bandits, actually seized Butter is in truth pretty much anyone's guess, while the constant fibbing to which the career-addicted Doug and Georgia subject each other prior to the florid scenes of passion gets tiresome fast. The extreme youth of the killers and victims adds some poignancy, as do the drugs, poverty and helplessness with which they constantly battle. Somewhere inside this coy work there's a serious message struggling to get out. Agent, Victoria Sanders. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
