Harlem Hit & Run is recent history wrapped in a murder mystery. It is full of the dialogue and details of how we were in the 1990s. Harlem is one of the complex characters. So is bad-ass actress native daughter Pearl Washington.She plays Police Lt. Summer Knight in her action movies and she is studying the Buddha's teaching as part of her martial arts training. Pearl chants over her friend when she is hit by a car on 125th Street: "Remember all this fleeting world is a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a flash of lightening in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."Pearl's lover, a Harlem cop, hears her and asks her to lead his 28th Precinct police people in a meditation.Neither Pearl nor readers will get inside the board room of the city's only black-owned commercial bank but they will find their footing on the threshold of the "Harlem Empowerment" we have witnessed since that time.