Yardie

Yardie Victor Headley (Atlantic Monthly Press, $18) First published on a desktop computer in 1992 and hawked at London clothing shops and nightclubs, this debut novel has sold 12,000 copies in England by hand distribution alone. A cross between The Godfather and Boyz N the Hood, it chronicles the lives of London's Jamaican drug dealers-or Yardies-through colorful slang and expository narrative. Jamaican-born Headley never comments on his characters' brutal survival tactics except to say that ''if you grow up poor in Jamaica, with no education, drugs is the only t'ing that will take you out of the trap.'' With its directionless plot, Yardie is often more engaging as cultural anthropology than as fiction. But Headley's blend of unblinking fatalism and youthful zeal gives it a piquant originality. B -Margot Mifflin