Abstract
Jacob Ross, born in the Caribbean island of Grenada, is an award-winning author and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His first crime novel, The Bone Readers, won the inaugural Jhalak Prize in 2017 and was followed by the sequel Black Rain Falling in 2020. This chapter analyses the novels’ protagonist, Grenadian police Detective Michael ‘Digger’ Digson, as he struggles to clean up a society in which violence, political corruption, and police brutality are endemic. Against a historical backdrop of colonial oppression and slavery, both the island’s poverty and pleasures are portrayed, but it is the damage toxic masculinity does to social relations in general, and family life in particular, which is central to the novels.
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Notes
- 1.
Prize-winning author Jacob Ross was born on the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1956 but has lived in the United Kingdom since 1984. An established writer across a wide range of genres, he came to international attention with The Bone Readers and Black Rain Falling, his two crime novels set in Grenada and protagonised by police detective Michael ‘Digger’ Digson. The Bone Readers won the inaugural Jhalak prize in 2016, while Black Rain Falling was included in The Guardian’s 2020 roundup of best crime novels of the year.
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Phillips, B. (2023). “A Good Man is Hard to Find”: The Making of Michael ‘Digger’ Digson. In: Martín, S., Santaulària, M.I. (eds) Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22144-6_7
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