VICTOR HEADLEY – Yardie. The X Press, UK, hardcover, 1992. Pan Books, UK. paperback, 1993, 2018. Atlantic Monthly Press, US, hardcover, 1992.

   D. is a mid-level coke dealer in Kingston, Jamaica. His outfit sends him to London with a British passport and a couple bags of coke. He’s met by the London contacts at the airport and they head for a house to complete the deal.

   D.’s job is to hand over the coke, get the money, hang out for a bit, and fly home with the dough.

   But D.’s got bigger plans.

   At the London dealer’s home, D. asks to use the toilet, and escapes out the bathroom window (protected by a silver spoon), with half the goods in tow.

   D.’s got some buddies in the London slums (which are high living compared to the Kingston ghettos), including Donna, a woman he’d come to know biblically in his youth.

   D. is smart with his stake, and leverages it to become a kingpin in the London crack trade.

   The Jamaican drug lords have much less ruth than their non-Jamaican competitors, having been de-moralized by rabid conditions back home. They are quick to kill, and quick to a drug hued hegemony, to greater and greater wealth and power.

   And then an international syndicate moves in….

           ——

   It’s a good mob book, a 90’s Jamaican Little Caesar set in London with pitch perfect dialect, Caribbean vibes, and parties with a dub soundtrack. My only real complaint is an unfinished ending, feeling like the writer wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything too drastic, lest spoiling options on a sequel.