Book Review: Hit Time

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Hit Time    
Ardella Garland
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Amateur Sleuth   Woman Main Character
Simon and Schuster, Feb 2001, $21.00, 223 pp.

Georgia Barnett is a feisty, brash and well-known television reporter for WJIV news in Chicago. Her latest assignment covering a charity event at Lake Michigan turns into the scoop of a lifetime when one of the witnesses finds a dead body floating in the water. It turns out that the man in the water, a murder victim, was Fab Weaver, a former record producer who was famous in the seventies on Chicago's Record Row.

Georgia becomes personally involved in the case when a family friend, guitarist Jimmy Flamingo, becomes the number one suspect in the murder. Jimmy, like so many other people, had a grudge against the record producer because Fab cheated him out of money. Georgia decides to do some investigating, not realizing that she is putting herself in the line of fire.

HIT TIME is a fascinating amateur sleuth tale starring an in your face heroine who endears herself to the reader with her wit, cleverness and bravado. The first person narrative allows the audience to feel close to Georgia and hope she can solve the case without getting herself killed in the process. Ardella Garland has constructed a complex mystery that takes so many twists and turns that the reader will never see who the real villain is.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner