GRACE EDWARDS: R.I.P.

Grace Edwards, a Harlem mystery writer and a former director of the Harlem Writers Guild, died on February 25. Edwards published her first novel when she was 55, and her first mystery, featuring a stylish female ex-cop turned sleuth, when she was 64.

From the New York Times:

Though she began writing at age 7, Grace F. Edwards waited until she was 55 to publish her first novel. That book, “In the Shadow of the Peacock,” was a lush portrayal of Harlem during World War II, a girl’s coming-of-age story set against the race riots of the time. 

It was a placeholder for the six detective stories she would later write, mysteries set in Harlem starring a female cop turned sociologist and accidental sleuth named Mali Anderson, always with a backbeat of jazz. The first of these, “If I Should Die,” was published in 1997, when Ms. Edwards was 64. 

She was 87 when she died on Feb. 25 at Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn, her death receiving little notice at the time. Her daughter, Perri Edwards, who confirmed the death, said she had had dementia for three years.

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