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MOST WANTED is emphatically not your run-of-the-mill crime fiction. It's a slim collection of short stories, told by an anonymous narrator, from Dominica in the Caribbean. Our hero is a bit of a Jack the Lad. He fancies himself as an investigative reporter, but whether anything ever gets published is another matter. Oh, and he reckons he's quite the private investigator as well ("my friend, it might be true that I fancy myself as a James Bond, Mike Hammer, Magnum PI type investigator", he says in the story Forbidden Zone). What he is good at, though, is getting himself into scrapes. So the short stories – really more like anecdotes – tell of his encounters with drug dealers and cutlass-wielding motorists and strange night-time figures and fierce dogs and corrupt cops. Our man relies on his quick wit and turn of speed to get himself out of trouble. In Forbidden Zone, probably the pick of the stories, his ingenuity is called on when he's asked to investigate a drug den in the appropriately-named Gutter Village. And there's some wonderfully deadpan throwaway humour. My favourite bit was in (surprise, surprise) Forbidden Zone, where our hero goes to the police station to warn the cops that he'll be on this special assignment: "So I entered the inspector's office and found it to be strangely dark. But he enlightened me when he said: 'You can remove those sunshades you are wearing because there is no sunlight in here.' I realised my oversight and complied." The stories are straight out of the storytelling tradition, and cry out for an audio version so you can hear the distinctive accent, the inflections and the chatty, confiding style brought to life. MOST WANTED is an engaging and charming collection from a tiny London press specialising in books from Dominica. If you think this is going to be a Caribbean version of Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana novels, think again. Christborne Shillingford brings us the grittier and seamier side of the island where the tourists – and most of the locals – don't venture. And I can think you can rest assured that Mma Ramotswe wouldn't have much time for our roguish hero – he'd have had the rough side of her tongue.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, October 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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