Silk Rhode Award Winner - 2025

As the first Silkie winner from the mystery genre, Bahamas West End Is Murder may seem like a departure from the cultural immersion previous winners have shared with readers. The story features American protagonists in the Bahamas who have an outsider’s perspective on their surroundings. But the sheer amount of research and personification Dirk Wyle portrays in his local characters, the conflict and interplay between foreigners and locals, and even the setting of it all won me over.

The returning scientist/doctor team of Dr. Ben Candidi and Dr. Rebecca Levis intended to vacation in the Freetown, but instead discover a murder at sea obliges them to rescue and commandeer the now-unmanned boat and assist with the criminal investigation elsewhere in the Bahamas, the West End, and the closest jurisdiction to the scene of the crime.

We first meet a bunch of wealthy vacationers, mostly other Americans, moored at the same West End port. Wyle wastes no time reinforcing these people are not to be trusted, and objectively so, given their proximity to the murder and their own self-interests with wealth and lifestyle over ethics or Bahamian law. Everyone is a suspect, and while Candidi and Levis would prefer to remain uninvolved, their presence alone might be compromising a lucrative drug trade. After all, these vacationers stay rich somehow.

The procedural side of the story is a slow burn but gripping, though it has little to do with this year’s Silkie award. Instead, Wyle’s supporting Bahamian characters do wonders for educating the rest of the world about the often-overlooked society of the Bahamas eclipsed by it’s fame as a warm and beautiful tourist destination. We also zoom out and learn important details about the Bahamas grounding this fantastic adventure into very plausible events.

For example, Wyle reminds us the Bahamas are not part of the Caribbean and shouldn’t be considered interchangeable with any Caribbean islands, and furthermore the Bahamian people themselves possess a variety of heritages making them nothing like a monolith. The country is poor, almost cursedly so, and that wealth inequality has brought the islands corruption and, regarding murder investigations, a distinct lack of resources.

Nonetheless, the supporting Bahamian characters here are dynamic, smart, capable, and compelling. I loved reading a story giving the locals such remarkable depth and agency; these characters are not bums or cliches or in any way second-fiddle to protagonists getting the hero treatment from the author. Ben Candidi regards the tiny police and detective force of the West End as obstinate amateurs, but learns during moments of life-threatening danger just how discreet and professional they are (no spoilers!) The harbormistress expertly guards her own information while sharing enough information for the honorable to find their missing clues. The ruling class of the Bahamas, nearly all expatriates with patronizing dogmas in one form or another, don’t realize they never held the pulse of the islands activities until scandal literally arrives at their front door.

Bahamas West End Is Murder uses a clever murder mystery story to educate us that just because the land itself is quite close to a much more salient, wealthy, and powerful United States, the Bahamas are very much another culture and a world away.