‘Deftly entertaining ... satisfyingly pushes all the requisite Agatha Christie-style buttons’ Barry Forshaw, The Independent DEATH IN PARADISE is one of BBC One’s most popular series which averages 9 million viewers.
Crime Fiction in the Caribbean: Reframing Crime and Justice is the first academic book to focus on crime fiction by anglophone Caribbean writers. It explores how contemporary writers experiment with the crime genre in order to convey, contextualize, and comment on crime and justice in Caribbean countries. Lucy Evans reads crime fiction as a versatile mode of writing that can be politically engaged, and that-in a Caribbean context-can expose power structures embedded in the region's multi-layered history of colonial conquest, genocide of Indigenous populations, plantation agriculture, transatlantic slavery, and indentured labour. This book covers fiction set in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, Grenada, and Haiti, discussing novels by Elizabeth Nunez, Jacob Ross, Marlon James, Harischandra Khemraj, Esther Figueroa, Edwidge Danticat, Cherie Jones, and several others. Evans considers how fiction by anglophone Caribbean writers not only reflects upon the social realities of crime and crime control in the Caribbean, but also at times contests or complicates scholarly, popular, and legal perspectives. She argues that through their engagement with the crime genre, these writers raise pressing questions about what constitutes crime and justice in a Caribbean context, and about accountability. Looking beyond the traditional focus of crime fiction and criminology on individual acts of wrongdoing, their fiction highlights systemic social harms rooted in the region's colonial past. Reading crime fiction through the lens of criminological research, Crime Fiction in the Caribbean brings the study of literary writing into scholarly debate on crime in the Caribbean. At the same time, it extends the global turn in crime fiction studies, focusing on a region that has been sidelined even in studies which examine the genre's international dimensions.
WINNER OF THE JHALAK PRIZE 'The Bone Readers is a page-turner, but its insights and language are equally testament to a literary novel of impressive depth and acuity' Guardian Secrets can be buried, but bones can speak . . . After standing witness to a murder on the streets of the Caribbean island of Camaho, young Michael 'Digger' Digson is recruited into a unique plain clothes homicide squad, an eclectic group of semi-official police officers, led by the enigmatic DS Chilman. Digger becomes enmeshed in Chilman's obsession with a cold case, the disappearance of a young man. But Digger has a murder to pursue too: that of his mother, killed by a renegade police squad when he was a boy. He has two weapons at his disposal - his skill in forensics, and Chilman's latest recruit, the mysterious, observant Miss Stanislaus. Together, the two find themselves dragged into a world of dangerous secrets that demands every ounce of their courage to survive. This award-winning crime debut by highly acclaimed author Jacob Ross marks the thrilling start to a new series following forensics genius Michael Digson. 'It's masterly. I've started to read it again with increasing admiration' Crime Time 'A breath-taking, thought-provoking, and yes brilliant read. I know this is a book I shall go back to again and again' Sunny Singh 'Ross's novel is one that effortlessly draws together the past and the present, gender, politics and the legacy of colonialism in a top quality Caribbean set crime thriller. The Bone Readers is a wonderful read' Catherine Johnson 'By turns thrilling, visceral and meditative, and always cinematic' Musa Okwonga 'An unconventional crime novel, and one that exposes the dark underbelly of 'paradise'' Book Muse (blog) 'I was fascinated by Ross' ability to create characters with depth and diversity. A great read' Not Chai tea (blog) 'A unique read, paced to the islands where it takes place with a group of interesting characters I will enjoy following into future books' Word Dreams (blog) 'An engaging, poetic and twist-filled Caribbean crime-noir novel. Masterful' Book Witty (blog)
It's opening game of the football season at Florida Field, and Monk DeVane, a former teammate of Zack Chasteen's, invites Zack and his girlfriend to a halftime party in one of the exclusive skyboxes. But they find chaos---there's a bomb under the chair of Darcy Whitehall, Monk Devane's boss and the rakish Jamaican owner of Libido, a chain of anything-goes Caribbean resorts. The bomb turns out to be a dud, but someone is putting the squeeze on Darcy Whitehall, and Monk DeVane enlists Zack to help protect his employer. When Zack arrives in Jamaica things quickly go to hell---more bombs (this time, for real), gnarly Jamaican politics, and the kinky diversions at Libido, where the prime spectator sport is watching guests frolic on the naked flume ride. As if that weren't enough, Zack's snooping around puts him in jeopardy with Freddie Arzghanian, king of the Caribbean money launderers. Suspenseful, laugh-out-loud funny, and with larger-than-life characters, Jamaica Me Dead is Bob Morris at his wicked best.
Cindy and Clint are enjoying their honeymoon when paradise quickly turns into hell. Clint drowns in a freak accident in the ocean. The local police are quick to insist that he was caught in a sudden riptide. But Cindy, left all alone, is not convinced. She realizes that the only way to get answers, and to save her own life, is to return to where it all began: Barbados.
Taking up a neglected area in the study of the crime novel, this collection investigates the growing number of writers who adapt conventions of detective fiction to expose problems of law, ethics, and truth that arise in postcolonial and transnational communities. While detective fiction has been linked to imperialism and constructions of race from its earliest origins, recent developments signal the evolution of the genre into a potent framework for narrating the complexities of identity, citizenship, and justice in a postcolonial world. Among the authors considered are Vikram Chandra, Gabriel García Márquez, Michael Ondaatje, Patrick Chamoiseau, Mario Vargas Llosa, Suki Kim, and Walter Mosley. The essays explore detective stories set in Latin America, the Caribbean, India, and North America, including novels that view the American metropolis from the point of view of Asian American, African American, or Latino characters. Offering ten new and original essays by scholars in the field, this volume highlights the diverse employment of detective fictions internationally, and uncovers important political and historical subtexts of popular crime novels.
First book in the exceptional new detective series set in Montego Bay, Jamaica with two memorable lead protagonists: Jamaican detective Ray Preddy and Glaswegian detective Sean Harris. In Montego Bay, Jamaica, privileged Chinese-Jamaican brothers Lester and Carter Chin Ellis have enjoyed a sheltered life as the heirs to the iced desserts empire Chinchillerz. One fateful night, following a fiery encounter with local law enforcement the brothers are taken to Pelican Walk Police Station, where Lester is detained for drunk driving, while Carter is released without charge. Within minutes of leaving the station Carter is shot dead in a drive-by, while his brother Lester is brutally assaulted in his cell. Discredited Detective Raytheon Preddy is put in charge of the case and is forced to accept the assistance of Detective Sean Harris, a Scottish lawman seconded to Jamaica. With his superiors watching his every move and the Chin Ellis family interfering with the investigation, Preddy is determined to catch the killer and save his career. "A veritable blockbuster of a crime novel " Peter Kalu, author of Yard Dogs
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 "'Saint X' is hypnotic. Schaitkin's characters...are so intelligent and distinctive it feels not just easy, but necessary, to follow them. I devoured [it] in a day." –Oyinkan Braithwaite, New York Times Book Review When you lose the person who is most essential to you, who do you become? Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, included in Good Morning America's 20 Books We're Excited for in 2020 & named as one of Vogue's Best Books to Read This Winter, Bustle's Most Anticipated Books of February 2020, and O Magazine's 14 of the Best Books to Read This February! Hailed as a “marvel of a book” and “brilliant and unflinching,” Alexis Schaitkin’s stunning debut, Saint X, is a haunting portrait of grief, obsession, and the bond between two sisters never truly given the chance to know one another. Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men–employees at the resort–are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives. Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth–not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister? At seven, Claire had been barely old enough to know her: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of eighteen at a turbulent moment of identity formation. As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will reveal the truth, an unlikely attachment develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by the same tragedy. For readers of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, Saint X is a flawlessly drawn and deeply moving story that culminates in an emotionally powerful ending.
This anthology of noir fiction set in São Paulo, Brazil, “might be the strongest entry yet in the long-running and globe-spanning Akashic Noir series” (San Francisco Book Review). Once known as the Land of Mist, São Paulo is now a dense, diverse, and globalized metropolis. It is the most populous city in the Americas, the Portuguese-speaking world, and the southern hemisphere—with some of the worst traffic on the planet. From its gleaming skyscrapers to its historic downtown and its rough, drug-infested outskirts, this unique anthology explores a truly unique city with “a timely feel, giving noir a host of feminine faces” (Kirkus). São Paulo Noir includes fourteen brand-new stories by Tony Bellotto, Olivia Maia, Marcelino Freire, Beatriz Bracher & Maria S. Carvalhosa, Fernando Bonassi, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Marçal Aquino, Jô Soares, Mario Prata, Ferréz, Vanessa Barbara, Ilana Casoy, and Drauzio Varella.