Grenada - Black Rain Falling/This is Canon

Country: Grenada  
Book: Black Rain Falling
Author: Jacob Ross
Publication Year: 2020
Genre: Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Country: Grenada   
Book: This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books
Author: Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne, Kadija Sesay
Publication Year: 2021
Genre: Literary Commentary

Of all the books I have read so far in this project, Black Rain Falling takes the prize for the most enjoyable so far. It does not perhaps carry the weight of social commentary of Woman At Point Zero (see: Egypt) , or the autobiographical detail of The Blue Sky (see: Mongolia) or Weep Not, Child (see Kenya). Yet in terms of sheer escapism, Black Rain Falling is unparalleled.

I love hardboiled detective books, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, etc., so a book set in the Antilles, featuring a character, Digger Digson, in the mould of Phillip Marlowe, was not going to be a hard sell. This is the second in the series, following 2016’s The Bone Readers, but I think most of the salient background details are covered in the narrative. That said, I’ll definitely be reading the first book in the near future.

Black Rain Falling takes place on the fictional island of Camaho, which is obviously a composite of several real life countries. Jacob Ross was born in Grenada, but has lived in Britain since the 1980s. Anyone with a passing knowledge of 20^th century history can’t help but raise an eyebrow at reference to the 1983 US invasion of Camaho.

In reality, it was Grenada that was invaded by the US in 1983. The reasons for the invasion are complicated, but one could cynically conclude that there had been a military coup on the island, but as it wasn’t the right kind of coup (i.e. communist), the US opposed it rather than funding, arming and supporting it, as with Chile, Iran, Iraq and far too many others than we have time to discuss here. I’m sure they won’t come up again during this project (sarcasm).

Anyway, the invasion has little to nothing to do with the novel and Camaho has features evocative of other islands in the Antilles. The most obvious analogue is Trinidad and Tobago, what with Kara Island being the smaller sister isle to Camaho, as well as their close proximity to Venezuela (at its closest point, Trinidad is only seven miles from the Venezuelan coast). We covered Trinidad and Tobago is far too little detail in the previous entry (see: Trinidad andTobago).

Anyway, having mapped the terrain, the plot of Black Rain Falling is equally rich. In a classic ‘against the clock’ plot, Digger has six weeks to prove the innocence of his partner, Miss Stanislaus, when she kills the man who raped her as a child. Against this background are cast the shadows of drug smugglers, child exploitation and police corruption.

I don’t really want to say too much about the actual plot here. It’s cinematic in its scope and  it’s honestly best to just sit back and enjoy the ride. If you like the same kind of hardboiled crime fiction I do, or things like The Wire, then you’re going to love this one.

The reason I heard about Black Rain Falling was from a book co-written by another Grenadian born writer, Joan Anim-Addo (like Jacob Ross, Anim-Addo now lives in the UK). This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books, co-written with Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay, is a gold mine for anyone attempting anything like the Reading the World project.

As well as the titular 50 books refereed to, This is the Canon includes an ‘If You Like This, Try...’ section at the end of each entry. In the margins for the entry on Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel Texaco (which is on my radar for when I come to Martinique), I first heard about Black Rain Falling and moved it to the top of the queue, not least because I didn’t think This is the Canon was enough to fill my quota for Grenadian writers, excellent a reference book as it is.

Many of the 50 books included in This is the Canon are ones I have read before: Kindred, Beloved, The Color Purple, If Beale Street Could Talk, Things Fall Apart, Wide Sargasso Sea. Masterpieces every single one of them.

Others, like A Grain of Wheat (see: Kenya), Woman At Point Zero (see: Egypt) and The Kite Runner (see: Afghanistan), are books I have already read for this project. Or, like Earl Lovelace’s Salt, books by writers I have read, but not that one book in particular (see: Trinidad and Tobago). And some authors. like Arundhati Roy and Marlon James, were already on the list.

However, there is a plethora of other writers and books that I have discovered from reading This is Canon. It is a book o which I will be returning to time and time again as this project continues. For anyone who doesn’t have time to read books from 195 countries, but wants to step beyond the limitations are white, western centralised literary lists, This is Canon is essential. 

Joan Anim-Addo

All in all, Grenada has been a fertile land to visit. I am enjoying the Caribbean too much to leave its warm waters just yet. Next stop, Barbados, speculative/science fiction and an entire planet based on the geography of the islands of the West Indies.

 

Addendum: Since writing this piece, I went back and read The Bone Readers. A shorter book than Black Rain Falling, but almost as good. Fills in a lot of the blanks I was missing from the sequel, but reading the second book first didn’t diminish its impact very much. I would of course recommend reading The Bone Readers first, so you’re not ahead of the story from reading its sequel. There’s not much to choose between them, both with tight dialogue and well plotted stories. 

Jacob Ross