N: A Romantic Mystery

Edwards (Ten Seconds, 1991) expands the parameters of the literary mystery with this complicated New Orleans noir about race, identity and class. Aimee Dubois, a well-educated Creole woman, runs an alternative newspaper; her curiosity about the murder of a teenager in a housing project leads her into the world of the black underclass. The narrative flashes back and forth as Aimee begins an affair and investigative partnership with Strip, a sexy, sensitive crack dealer who introduces her to a lively array of dangerous potential murder suspects, including a motherly woman who controls her neighborhood's drug traffic, and a menacing minister. Edwards challenges racial, class and gender stereotypes with strong characters and palpable mood. With constant shifts in tense, point of view and typeface, he reaches into the postmodern armory of fragmentation techniques, but his prose is fluid and a story does emerge from beneath all the stylistic wrinkles. But the plot, which is peppered with coincidences, remains secondary, a vehicle with which Edwards examines New Orleans as a paradigm of cultural ambivalence and dislocation. All the literary ambition, however, leaves the narrative suspended somewhere between a novel of suspense and a novel of ideas. The result is not enough of either, and murder mystery fans will feel cheated by the end. (May) FYI: Ten Seconds was named a PW best book of 1991.