“One man among a thousand have I found. But a woman among all these have I not found”. This opening phrase sets the tone of Diran Adebayo’s hilarious My Once Upon a Time. Situated on the same London streets as the authors’ debut novel, Some Kind of Black, this time, the protagonist is a down-on-his-luck private investigator curiously named Boy, who is hired by a mystery millionaire.

Boy is assigned to find an eligible bride for his wealthy benefactor within the space of a week, his only stipulation being that she be a woman of ‘substance’. But as the intrepid sleuth scours the dark haunts of the busy city to complete his mission, rather predictably, all hell breaks loose. On his erratic travels, Boy encounters small-time drug-dealers, violent night-club bouncers, and women who will settle for nothing less than a $50,000 per year salary from any prospective partner. However, little compares to the painful soul-searching he suffers as he is eventually forced to acknowledge the demons that exist in his own unfulfilled life.     

Despite the wacky, off-beat humor, the laughter often takes a back-burner to more philosophical and culturally relevant issues. The ageless antagonisms that exist between black men and women top the list. One candidate, Lucia, explains how God gave her former partner a daughter as payback for all the girls he had distressed in his life.

One of this book's main strengths is the accuracy of Adebayo’s writing. Through the dialect he so easily relies on, the easily identifiable British landmarks and his cinematic descriptive style, Adebayo captures the vernacular and nuances of a lost generation of young, black London. Similar in many ways to Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlings adventures or Raymond Chandler's detective escapades, Adebayo's influences aren't hard to pin down. Boy is a character whose warts-and-all depiction makes him very easy to relate to. Lazy yet ambitious, outwardly content but still searching for answers, there is a little of him in all of us.

Underneath the everyday struggles, subtle ironies and highly improbable plot, lies a keen wisdom that is universal in its nature. With Boy, Adebayo has created an anti-hero that, despite his frequent stupidity and immaturity, evokes emotions of support, excitement and frustration. Coming from the South London hood, all he seems to care about is bringing in the stacks until his life undergoes a serious transformation that will have you laughing and crying at the same time. A good ‘guy’ read.