If you're anything like me, "Kingston, Jamaica" evokes images of dreadlocked Rastas, "a government yard in Trenchtown", and probably Sanka Coffie and Derice Bannock trying to raise funds for the Jamaican bobsled team. All of these images - with the exception of Sanka and Derice, who aren't real people, it turns out - are probably entirely true, but there's clearly a lot more to the Jamaican capital city than that, which is where Colin Channer's edited collection comes in.
A quick word may also be worthwhile on this series. Akashic Books is a publisher of genre fiction, and has embarked on the noble project of assembling collections of noir short stories from a wide range of different places. Most of the obvious American locations have been covered (in some cases, multiple times over), and the series has expanded to the Caribbean, Africa, much of Europe, the Middle East and parts of East Asia. Australian readers should take note that there isn't - yet - a "Sydney Noir" or a "Melbourne Noir", much less a "Brisbane Noir", despite the possibilities such locations would afford.
The objective with these collections is for the authors - many of whom seem to be locals - to contribute an original story set recognisably in one location in the city. The requirement for an original story may be waived in some of the American volumes (to judge by their titles), but Channer's foreword makes it clear that it's very much the case here. Having read a number of edited short-story collections, I consider this to be a strength of Akashic's approach, as edited collections frequently have an "odds and ends" approach, with authors dashing off any old partially-realised sketch they have sitting around. Channer explicitly says that his brief wasn't to accept this sort of thing. While the requirement to have the story set in a specific neighbourhood probably means more to anyone who's actually been to Kingston, it does still create a sense of location for me as a non-visitor.
Over the 11 stories here - one of which is provided by Channer himself, and another of which is by no less a figure than Marlon James some three years before his Booker Prize win - we're treated to a lot of the seamy underbelly of this Caribbean metropolis. There are shady private eyes (Kwame Davis - "My Lord", which opens proceedings), anatomised reactions to a crime (James' "Immaculate", a disturbing read at times but one of the real standouts), conspiracy caper stories (Christopher John Farley's madcap "54-46 (That's My Number)") and all points in between.
Not all the stories are created equal, by any means. Farley and James are both in complete control of their craft, with James' story deliberately featuring more loose ends than one would normally expect. Ian Thomson's "A Grave Undertaking", in contrast, builds to what should have been a truly satisfying twist but fizzes to a rather tame and unsatisfying conclusion. Marcia Douglas' "One-Girl Halfway Tree Concert" appears to have pretensions of being a tone poem, rather than a straight work of fiction, and suffers as a result as well.
Jamaica is clearly a character in all of these stories, even if the Kingston distrcts themselves aren't areas I know. A great many of them feature skilful use of Jamaican patois (Douglas has written her story entirely in this rich language), and there's a constant temptation to read them aloud to tap into the oral story-telling heritage of which most of them are a part.
As befits stories written by locals, too, this isn't your stereotypical Jamaica. The characters don't all sit around smoking ganja and listening to Bob Marley, although reggae plays a role in a couple of the stories (one features the suggestion that a relationship is official when the boy asks the girl to listen to Shabba Ranks). The underworld to which many of the characters belong, too, isn't the universe of rudebwoys familiar to some from dancehall music and others from The Harder The Come. The exception to this, perhaps typically, is Farley's caper story, which specifically compares a crime lord to Jimmy Cliff's character in that iconic film. An understanding of reggae culture really isn't the assumed background here, although it can help - as in Channer's "Monkey Man" which name-checks a number of iconic producers.
An edited collection of short stories will just about always suffer somewhat from the need to ensure that all contributors are pulling in the same direction. While not everyone does so here, the successes more than make up for the few failings. I do wonder how much my appreciation of these stories would change were they set in a location I knew better, although there are a couple of Akashic Noir collections set in such places I'll review later, so we'll be able to find out.
4 stars.
