How do you solve a problem like the Philippine crime story? This a question The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories seeks to answer through its new Crime Issue, the last printed run before becoming a full-fledged online publication.
Throughout his four-year stint as editor-publisher, Kenneth Yu championed stories of all stripes. Yet even he has noted that crime stories written by Filipinos are hard to come by. The PGS Crime Issue was the most difficult to complete, according to his introduction; fewer writers submitted mysteries than in any other genre.
Previous issues saw stories that take on challenging subgenres such as high fantasy (Nikki Alfar's "Beacon" and Vin Simbulan's "The Wail of the Sun") and even metafiction (Crystal Koo's "The Scent of Spice") but there's something about the mystery that is largely untapped, a worldview that remains impenetrable through Filipino eyes.
Which doesn't mean that Pinoy mysteries do not exist. PGS guest editor F.H. Batacan is most famous for her Palanca-winning Smaller and Smaller Circles, one of the few novels that depict serial murders and detective work within a local setting. Since its publication in 2002, it has been reprinted by UP Press at least four times, 6,000 copies in all. She is no lightweight in her knowledge of the crime genre either. Her introduction cites authors like Matt Beynon Rees and Natsuo Kirino, crisscrossing the globe for fictional predecessors.
Is the continued interest in her novel the exception that proves the rule, or is it evidence that despite the scarcity, we are are crime-reading audience waiting for a gumshoe of our own?
Taking a stab at crime
Although there was no dominant theme among the five stories featured in the PGS Crime Issue, there are enough threads that tie them together. They portray protagonists caught up in the tide of circumstance, and whether their actions result in triumph or tragedy is the lynchpin of their respective stories.
Xin Mei's "Less Talk Less Mistake" and Crystal Koo's "The Last Time I Saw Uncle Freddie" depict Filipino-Chinese characters confronting the sometimes dark nuances of their families' culture. In "God is the Space Between," Maryanne Moll writes about a woman gripped by physical pain that is only a part of her harrowing reality.
Kidnap for ransom is the crime driving the plot of Dominique Cimafranca's "Grenadier" although the ending is not what one would expect. Through a series of blog entries, Alexander Osias's Blogoy character in "Blogcaster" transforms from well-to-do internet slacktivist into a true resistance advocate.
None of the stories in the PGS Crime Issue are whodunits in the true sense of the word. They are, however, why- and how-dunnits, with a couple of stories morphing into revenge tales redressing sins of the past.
Justice takes on a very fluid quality in Philippine crime, where the trick isn't finding who the culprit is, but making sure he does pay. Even the arrival of the police does not signal the end of a criminal ordeal--they often turn out to be a different, more dangerous complication.
Fresh insights, but low on thrills
The biggest weakness in this collection is the uneven quality of the plotting, an element that can make or break a crime story. The opening by Xin Mei involves a lot of waiting, remembering and reflecting on the state Filipino-Chinese women across three generations. The most exciting events come at the end, and while the twist itself was satisfying from a story perspective, the middle could have been bouyed by more interesting dialogue or plot twists.
Maryanne Moll's story suffers particularly in terms of story tension. The first-person POV telegraphs the very ominousness of the final revelation so much that it doesn't matter what the specific thing is in the grand scheme of things. The reader instinctively knows Something Bad is about to be revealed, and the pay-off is not quite as unnerving as it could have been.
Crystal Koo's portrayal of an investigation told backwards keeps the story on edge, despite clues early on about the ultimate fate of the eponymous Uncle Freddie. She also injects several insights on the immigrant experience, particularly the harshness of life in the 'Old Country' and the lengths people take for a chance to escape to a better life, as symbolized by their passage to the Philippines.
Alexander Osias uses elements of government transgressions to tell a classic story of a man finding his own sense of morality. Observations about the uncertain role of blogging and internet journalism are sharp and still highly relevant. The use of blog posts to tell as story adds freshness to the plotting, though the ending is all but inevitable.
The most exciting of the bunch is Dominique Cimafranca's "Grenadier." Like Koo, Cimafranca makes liberal use of the flashback to create uncertainty as facts of a kidnap is pieced together by both the reader and the police investigators. The the interrogation scene and final confrontation with the kidnapped boy are the most compelling scenes in the entire collection.
While this issue does not claim to create the definitive qualities of Filipino crime-writing, it does tease out interesting possibilities that writers can exploit in their fiction. For a society rife with non-imaginary violence, making sense of it through storytelling remain as important ever. With Kenneth Yu's PGS venture translating into an online platform, avenues for more crime and mystery stories by Filipinos are becoming more varied and ultimately necessary.
Image taken from hall.chris25 on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
