Hit Time: A Mystery.

by Ardella Garland (Yolanda Joe), Simon & Schuster, February 2002 $21.00, ISBN 0-684-87376-1

Hit Time, Yolanda Joe's second mystery novel penned under the pseudonym Ardella Garland, opens as Channel 8 news reporter Georgia Barnett witnesses a body wash up on shore while she's on the air covering an annual swim relay at the pier. Like fictional sleuths Blanche White, Mall Anderson and Tamara Hayle, Georgia uncannily seems to find herself in the thick of a murder mystery.

The main suspect in the murder of Fab Weaver, an unsavory record mogul, is blues singer Jimmy Flamingo-a dear friend of the Barnett family-who it just so happens also plays at a nightclub owned by Georgia's "sister-twin," Peaches. Georgia's steady beau is a detective, and add to the mix the fact that Georgia has access to information about the crime because of her reporter job, and you've got the makings of a detective novel.

Hit Time clips along at a brisk pace following the ambitious Barnett as she peels away layers of the puzzle, witness-by-witness and scene-by-scene. Joe has created a funny character in Georgia, whose occasional asides read as if she's talking directly to readers, sharing clues while foreshadowing what's to come.

Admittedly, this is light fare. And Hit Time is sometimes beset with cliched, dated dialogue and banal prose like "She had an ugly-wugly feeling." Yet every now and then, a beautiful turn of phrase appears like "the wind hiked up Lake Michigan's blue skirt, showing off the frothy white slip underneath."

In the end, Hit Time is not overly predictable and gives readers insight into Chicago's rich blues history and the treachery of the music industry.

--Angela Bronner is a freelance writer living in Harlem.