Grace Edwards, the mystery author who wrote the Mali Anderson series that began with If I Should Die, died on February 25 at age 87. According to Edwards's daughter, who confirmed the news to the New York Times, Edwards had had dementia for three years.
Despite being a lifelong writer, Edwards did not publish her first novel, a coming-of-age story set in Harlem during World War II called In the Shadow of the Peacock, until she was 55. She went on to publish six detective novels, all featuring the character Mali Anderson and all set in Harlem.
Edwards had a varied career before becoming an author. In the late 1960s she and a friend owned an Afrocentric dress shop in West Harlem called Neferti, an intentional misspelling of Nefertiti due to another business already having that name. In the 1970s she was a disability analyst in New York State's social services department, and in 1984 she became the secretary of the Harlem Writers Guild. From 2007 to 2016 she was the Guild's executive director, and she taught creative writing at several colleges and universities around New York.
Diane Richards, current executive director of the Harlem Writers Guild, wrote that Edwards's "take on Harlem is authentic, and captures the essence of its pain, pride and joy in all of her literary works."