Edison T. Williams' Prickett's Well is a long fuse with a slow burn, where the sparks are visible but the time to detonation is unknown. Anticipation, therefore, is built throughout this carefully constructed novel set in Barbados.
"Set in Barbados" is probably more accurate than it at first appears, because Williams weaves the whole island into his story of murder and underworld mayhem with exquisite care. The island consequently functions as an observer character as the novel drifts from St Lucy in the north all over the place. “Holetown was a two-street town. There was a First Street and a Second Street, both located toward the northern end of a four-hundred-meter strip of main road and opposite the upscale Limegrove shopping mall and the ancient Methodist church.” It is this use of the complete landscape of the island that allows Williams to indulge in frequent digressions about Barbadian customs, culture, history and dialect (the last described in proper linguistic terminology).
As a result of the author's engagement with the sociology of the country, the murder is very much secondary to the exploration of current, everyday Barbadian concerns. Primary among these is the sense of a deteriorating social fabric no one seems to be able to even begin to mend.
The novel does not simply romanticize the past or condemn the present, however. Any sentimentality is complicated by the second issue of concern to the author, that is, the evolving and uncertain relationship between the sexes. The central characters, Crick, a male, and Lashley, a female, represent different views of Barbadian society. The young female exemplifies the future by way of her education, computer literacy, general sensitivity to the human condition, and her sense of women, and most disadvantaged groups, as being victims in society. This is early established when she engages her colleague and his friend in a spirited discussion about the use of insulting nicknames. She objects, while the two men endorse the creativity of the naming process. “But Lashley wasn't laughing. ‘That is cruel,’ she said, staring at Broomes. They looked at her and she continued. ‘This fellow had a murr, not a mother? I am sorry, but you are being very offensive.’”
This initial confrontation, a clear conflict in values, continues throughout the novel. Crick and Lashley are not on any collision course, rather they are on converging paths as he moves, predictably, from concern over her professional capacity to a grudging admiration for her modernity and competence. It is just possible, too, that change is, if not initiated, certainly cemented by her beating up a criminal who has attacked Crick.
On the whole, the novel is well written and quite engaging. Williams takes awhile to define Crick’s character, spends too much time in the early stages of the novel on long sociological disquisitions to the detriment of plot development, and he neglects to fully develop Lashley. These issues are easily overlooked when the novel is taken as a whole.
The attention to detail with respect to descriptions of the island; the careful development of the investigation; the use of real police stations and some historical policemen as reference points; as well as the references to actual police cases, all create a feeling of authenticity that will make Prickett's Well an easy read for Barbadians. The sociological observations will be comfortably familiar to Caribbean readers and very informative to those outside the region, all making for a very good read.
