But I Smile Anyway…

Today, I am on the blog tour for Guy Kennaway’s soon-to-be released, Good Scammer.

The Blurb

Sometimes you must break the rules when your dignity and survival call for it.

With an unlikely partnership at its heart and based on true events, Good Scammer tells the extraordinary story of Clive ‘Bangaz’ Thompson, the local hero who has turned Campbell’s Cove into the scamming capital of the world, and Willy, a broke, middle-aged writer, who needs one more bestselling novel to save him from financial ruin.

Bangaz is an orphan born in West Jamaica, raised with no love, no education and no prospects of decent work. After losing his job within Jamaica’s booming hotel industry, and with a baby daughter to feed, Bangaz is forced to turn elsewhere for money. He devises an ingenious business model. For “a small handling fee”, wealthy Americans can avoid paying taxes on their recent surprise lottery win… His plan will bring millions of dollars to the little villages around the Jamaican coast each year, making Bangaz a very wealthy man – and a hero in his community.

But in building his empire, Bangaz has made some dangerous enemies, from local gangsters, to the FBI – and they’re closing in. Before it’s too late, Bangaz commissions Willy Loxley-Gordon, a washed-up English writer living nearby to write his story. Willy reluctantly agrees, recognising that this could be his last chance for success.

Compulsively readable and delivered with Guy Kennaway’s signature sense of quirky humour, Good Scammer is a transporting hymn of love to West Jamaica, which challenges our assumptions about the morality of crime, in an astute exploration of slavery, colonialism, theft and victimhood.

Releasing 23rd January, 2024

My Review

Good Scammer by Guy Kennaway
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love it when a book is written with the language or accent affectations of its setting.
Good Scammer is a fantastic book set in Jamaica, sprinkled liberally with Patois.
It tells the story of Clive ‘Bangaz’ Thompson, a local of Campbell Cove. He is not educated formally, with little literacy in English and only the minimal support of the aunt who begrudgingly brought him up. However, he has brains, which he uses to create a huge scam operation that brings prosperity to the community he lives in and provides for his family and partner, Pauline and their two daughters.
All this is done with no violence or guns. Bangaz feels like he has found a way to gain repayment of generations of debt from slavery and colonialism.
Things are never simple, and there are some real fixes he finds himself in, but I loved the way the story was told, with men showing that laidback attitude that is synonymous with the people of Jamaica.
Bangaz finds an author whom he wants to tell his story, with the idea of getting it published, and the story goes back and forth from the past to the present with Willy, the writer in question, trying to make sense of this unimaginable life of the gentle gangster in front of him.
I enjoyed this book.

About the Author

Guy Kennaway is a writer of fiction and memoir, born in the UK and who has lived in Jamaica for the past 35 years. One day, a man he had known since he was a child, demanded that Guy write his life story – of how he became one of the best scammers in West Jamaica.

Guy is best known for his novels One People, about village life in Jamaica; Bird Brain, about a bunch of optimistic pheasants, and for his memoirs Time To Go about killing his mother (with her permission) and Sunbathing Naked and Other Miracle Cures. His most recent novel, The Accidental Collector, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction in 2021. His most recent memoir is Foot Notes, a broad comedy about race and nationality which he wrote with his daughter-in-law’s brother Hussein Sharif.

In Jamaica, Guy runs a campaign called Speak Properly: Chat Patwa, encouraging the promotion of patwa as an accepted language.

‘In all my writing my aim is to delight and amuse,’ Kennaway has said. ‘Hopefully I make people laugh out loud. Laughter is our most effective weapon in the battle against the difficulties and struggles of life. If I can transport my reader to a happy, joyful world, my mission is successful.’