Do Or Die [Hardcover]

Grace F. Edwards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 18, 2000

Harlem's supersleuth Mali Anderson is back on the case in the fourth installment of Grace Edwards's beautifully rendered and critically acclaimed Mali Anderson mystery series.

All of the characters Edwards's fans love are back. This time Mali and company take to the high seas for a brief trip aboard the QE2. When they return to Harlem, they discover that the singer in Dad's jazz band has been murdered--her throat slit from ear to ear, and her shirtsleeve ripped to expose faded track marks. The girl's father, also a member of Dad's band, is devastated. Out of a sense of duty, responsibility, and loyalty to her father and his grieving friend, Mali sets out to find the murderer and slips in and out of the "three B's" of Harlem--the beauty shops, barbershops, and bars--with her signature grace and grit.

A spectacularly drawn Harlem--the good, the bad, and the ugly--comes vividly to life in Do or Die, which has all the charm and chutzpah Edwards's fans have grown to expect. Readers will take delicious pleasure not only in Mali's struggle to find the culprit before he strikes again; they will cheer her on as she fights for her jaw-droppingly gorgeous (and sensitive) man, Tad Honeywell, when he becomes the target of a sexpot's advances.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Grace Edwards's Mali Anderson series (If I Should Die, A Toast Before Dying, No Time to Die) takes readers on a veritable walking tour of Harlem's institutions and inhabitants. This time out, Mali, a former cop, strolls off a QE2 jazz cruise and straight into murder. Her jazz musician father's pianist, Ozzie Hendrix, has returned from a gig in Newport to find his daughter Starr, a budding singer trying to recover from a heroin addiction, with her throat slashed. With friends and family devastated, Mali's method of detection is anything but by the book, much to the dismay of her boyfriend, detective Tad Honeywell. Her best informers are a slew of Harlem beauticians:

Bertha, my 20-year friend, owns Bertha's Beauty Salon and is a reliable source of street news, gossip, and any scandal worth repeating. She has been on the same location on Eighth Avenue years before it was renamed for Frederick Douglass, and she doesn't have to poke her head out the door to catch a whisper. It flows in automatically as early as 7 a.m., when the regulars from Miss Laura's luncheonette arrive with breakfast and news hotter than grits.

Rumor has it that Starr's death was a brutal payback for her efforts to distance herself from Short Change, her one-time pimp and supplier. But when Short Change is gunned down and the prints of Travis Morgan, a prominent Harlem businessman, turn up on the knife that killed Starr, respectable and not-so-respectable worlds start colliding--and the clash will have Mali fighting for her life.

Edwards's novels tend to be more successful as social history than as mystery. A jumble of characters and incidents muddies the plot, but the author's carefully rendered portrait of Harlem's streets and language carries an unmistakable glow of authenticity. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly

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)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (July 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385492480
• ISBN-13: 978-0385492485
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,805,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do or Die is a reliable hit!, August 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Do Or Die (Hardcover)

If you have not read Grace Edwards before, you need to run (don't walk) to your favorite book store and plunk down what ever it takes to obtain the entire series of Mali Anderson mysteries. Mali Anderson is a former NYPD cop who sued the city and won an unlawful dismissal suit. That tells you something about this strong black woman's character. She's a devoted daughter to her musician father, a nurturing aunt to her orphaned teenage nephew, a fierce protector of her friends, and a loyal friend and lover to her man, Tad (a NYPD detective). And that's just the easy stuff!

Ms. Edwards rich knowledge of New York's Harlem (historical and current) and the greats in jazz make this series a virtual escapade of memorable sights and sounds. If you enjoy Charlotte Carter's Nanette Hayes Mystery series (including "Rhode Island Red," "Coq Au Vin," and "Drumsticks"), you'll thoroughly enjoy Mali Anderson and the other vivid characters that Ms. Edwards' magic pen creates.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great storytelling, August 9, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Do Or Die (Hardcover)

To recover from the traumatic aftermath of hunting and catching a serial killer, Mali Anderson, her significant other Tad, and her father book a cruise on the QE2. The liner is hosting a jazz festival. Balmy days and romantic nights ease some of the tension before a much mellower Mali leaves the ship.

However, her tranquillity ends when her father and a close friend Ozzie Hendrix share a gig at Club Harlem. Someone slit the throat of Ozzie's daughter, leaving the man totally distraught and nearly broken. Mali's father tries to console his musician friend, but Ozzie soon disappears. Almost simultaneously, his daughter's ex-pimp is found murdered. Mali believes Ozzie went over the edge and killed the person he felt murdered his beloved child. Mali begins her own investigation hoping to find out that Ozzie is innocent before the police arrest him for murder in the first degree.

The heroine is a strong, independent African-American who knows how to work within the system to change it for the better. She makes a great role model for all people regardless of race or gender. Mali stars in an exciting who-done-it in which she shows how much she cares for her loved ones and friends even when she questions their innocence. Grace T. Edwards has penned a thought provoking mystery in DO OR DIE in which the obvious suspect could not have done the crime. The fourth Mali Anderson novel is a triumphant urban mystery that will bring much sattisfaction to sub-genre fans.

Harriet Klausner

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars don't read it for the mystery, August 13, 2001

By 

Kimberley Wilson (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Do or Die (Mass Market Paperback)

Don't pick up this book, looking for an Agatha Christie or P.D. James type of mystery. This is not a classic who done it. I enjoyed Do or Die mainly because it is a delicious hymm to Harlem. Grace Edwards does a terrific job of making you see that community. You almost taste the food, feel the funky clothes recognize the people that heroine, Mali runs into. The relationship between Mali and her father is touching and funny and could carry the book by itself but it's Harlem that is the star of this book and you'll find that fascinating.

Kimbereley Wilson, author of 11 Things Mama Should Have Told You About Men.