Discovering that Hit Time is a murder mystery featuring a hardworking, fast-talking TV journalist with a great sense of humor was totally delightful. So let me share my delight.

In Hit Time, Channel Eight's TV journalist, Georgia Barnett, has another murder to solve. During a location shoot for a feel-good segment covering a local swim club's charitable event, (something Georgia likes to refer to as an "easy-pleasy") an unidentified dead body surfaces in Lake Michigan.

Georgia and her very significant other, Chicago's finest, Detective Doug Eckart, start investigating the apparent murder. Dead men tell no tales, but it surely does help when they wear shoes - size 12, triple E - that have been designed and hand sown by a renowned local cobbler.

Georgia discovers that these shoes were made for one Fab Weaver, a former record executive. Weaver ran Hit Time Records, a label located on Chicago's famed Record Row. Record Row was the real deal for blues and produced such stars as Etta James and Curtis Mayfield. Before the Beatles signed with Capitol records, they were working for a Record Row label.

Music has always been important to Georgia and her family. Her "sister-twin," Peaches, is a local nightclub owner and singer. Jimmy Flamingo, a family friend, is a gifted blues guitarist whose problems with drugs have kept him out of the spot light for a while. Jimmy helped Peaches when her confidence wasn't all that it should be and she wants to return the favor.

So Peaches gives Jimmy the chance to play at her club and he's terrific. Everything, however, is not so terrific after Georgia discovers that Jimmy once worked for Fab Weaver and recently threatened to kill him for stealing a song of Jimmy's.

Seems like the old timers from Record Row all hated Fab Weaver: a man who used their talents, stole their songs and gave them little in return. Georgia and Doug want to believe that Jimmy is innocent, but the only way to prove it is to find out how Fab Weaver ended up in Lake Michigan with a bullet in his back.

Hit Time is not for those who like driving in the slow lane, although it may appeal to those who drive in the slow lane but often wish they were in a faster lane. And it will certainly appeal to readers who enjoy the kind of dialog that snaps, crackles and pops.

Spending an hour or two with Hit Time's heroine, the sassy yet classy Georgia Barnett, in her Chicago, is a guaranteed good time. Hit Time is fresh, fast and entertaining: it 's a good mystery and a good story. Don't let the cover fool you.

--Judith Flavell