Table of Contents
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Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Mallam Atta Market
Adjoa Twum
Pig Farm
Kwame Dawes
Aburi
Fantasia in Fans and Flat Screens
Kofi Blankson Ocansey
Jamestown
PART II: HEAVEN GATE, NO BRIBE
Billie McTernan
Labadi
Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo
Weija
Patrick Smith
Labone
Anne Sackey
Kanda
Gbontwi Anyetei
Airport Hills
Nana-Ama Danquah
Cantonments
Ayesha Harruna Attah
Tesano
Eibhlín Ní Chléirigh
East Legon
Anna Bossman
High Street
Excerpt from USA NOIR edited by Johnny Temple
Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition
For my cousin Kwasi Twum—
thank you for always staying in stride with me.
For hiking mountains, going to raw-food retreats,
eating lots of sushi, and braving a colonic,
all so I would know that I am not alone.
I love you.
They broke the sheds and built a town
Which grew stronger as city or state.
The city advanced as Accra has shown,
And the infant town conquered its fate.
—Dr. J.B. Danquah,
from the poem “Buck Up, O Youth!” (1938)
Introduction
Cry Your Own Cry
Accra is the perfect setting for noir fiction. The telling of such tales—ones involving or suggesting death, with a protagonist who is flawed or devious, driven by either a self-serving motive or one of the seven deadly sins—is woven into the fabric of the city’s everyday life. Allow me to explain.
Accra is a city that stands at the center
