Accra Noir

Starred review from October 1, 2020
Thirteen tales of the trouble people find in the capital city of Ghana when they're trying to make a buck. "For them it was about the hustle," Patrick Smith writes about the Labone Choirboys, grifters trying to get a lawyer involved in a billion-dollar scam in "The Situation." But even those on the margins have their hustles. A kaya girl who carries shoppers' bundles in the marketplace in Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond's "Chop Money" tries to make a bit on the side by subletting her rented room. The shop girl in Anna Bossman's "Instant Justice" hopes to find her way out of poverty through her relationship with an older man. Kofi Blankson Ocansey tells the tale of a woman who parlays her relationships into an assortment of consumer goods in "Fantasia in Fans and Flat Screens." Loss of innocence is sometimes the price of economic mobility. Billie McTernan's "The Labadi Sunshine Bar" follows a girl from the country into the sex trade. A young woman earns her keep as a drug mule in Adjoa Twum's "Shape-Shifters." Not all the disillusioned are young. Ayesha Harruna Attah's 30-ish wife finds the rewards of her marriage to the septuagenarian of "Kweku's House" not what she bargained for. A woman in her 40s discovers her longtime lover has fathered children with two other women in Anne Sackey's "Intentional Consequences." Some hustlers wreak havoc on others. Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo's young heroine learns that her husband's source of income must cost her something precious in "The Driver." And the vengeful husband in editor Danquah's "When a Man Loves a Woman" is a hustler who hustles himself. There's plenty of noir to go around in this all-too-sad volume about people struggling to get by.

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October 26, 2020
This welcome volume in the Akashic noir series, set in Ghana, hits plenty of the expected bleak notes and classical noirish phrasings. Gbontwi Anyetei’s gripping “Tabilo Wuɔfɔ
” contains such memorable lines as “Anybody could burn down a church” while also serving as an almost casual introduction to the nuances of Ghanaian culture (“the barely literates who still insisted on using English”). That doesn’t mean there aren’t traditional noir tales, notably Adjoa Twum’s cocaine-smuggling and murder-filled “Shape-Shifters.” Danquah’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” opens with the fantastic line, “Every day for the past five days, Kwame had woken up next to a corpse,” and delivers a wonderful variant on a spousal murder plot. Anne Sackey’s “Intentional Consequences” takes the scorned-woman revenge story in a surprising and witty direction. Though there are a few weak stories among the 13 selections, this stands as one of the better recent Akashic anthologies.

December 1, 2020

Akashic's "Noir" series consists of short noir fiction all set in a specific locale and now boasts 50 titles. The latest is based in Accra, Ghana's capital, and is a superb choice. Editor Danquah's introduction describes Accra as a city filled with "the tension between modernity and traditionalism, the symbolism and storytelling both obvious and coded, the moral high ground, the duplicity and deceit, the most basic human failings laid bare alongside fear and love and pain, and the corrupting desire to have the very things you are not meant to have." Each story reaffirms how fundamental "place" is to the noir genre and how the locale shapes the story as much as the characters themselves. Stories range from the underbelly of the urban scene, filled with grifters, prostitutes, and thieves, while others explore love, infidelity, and vengeance. Standouts include Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo's sublime example of perfect noir, "The Driver"; Eibhl�n N� Chl�irigh's heartbreaking tale of "The Boy Who Wasn't There," chronicling a short, depraved life; and Anne Sackey's "Intentional Consequences," a delectable revenge tale with just the right dose of humor. VERDICT Strongly recommended for purchase where international noir is appreciated and requested.--Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI

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