Kwei Quartey

Who would want to murder Gladys, a young woman studying to be a doctor. She volunteered at an HIV clinic battling the wide-spreading threat of AIDS across Ghana. She seemed to be a very sweet girl with a bright future ahead of her and yet she wound up strangled to death and hidden in a grove of trees. Darko Dawson has been assigned the case even though it is out of his jurisdiction. Because he has family ties to this remote village, Darko potentially could navigate the cultural conflict show more between witchcraft versus modern science.
Like any good murder mystery there is that one suspect who looks so good for the crime that you think how could it NOT be him? Everything points to Samuel, a man obsessed with Gladys. Witnesses saw him talking (harassing?) her right where she was murdered. He couldn't account for his whereabouts before or after the crime...even Darko's aunt swears the boy was seen talking to Gladys.
[As an aside: The definition of a wife of the gods is a woman who has committed a crime serving penitence with fetish priests. This woman is forced to have sex with the priests to "pay" for her crime.]
Confessional: I thought the ending of this book was perfect. It was very satisfying, akin to putting the last pieces of a puzzle into place. I enjoyed getting to know Darko Dawson and wished I had more Quarty books on my Challenge list to see what Darko did next. show less

Quartey uses a new storytelling method with each book in the series, and so it is so far from a formulaic mystery as it can get. He also tells stories unique to Ghana. A really nasty guy who trafficked Nigerians becomes a pimp of high class women to the rich, and is killed. His innocent girlfriend goes missing. This is a missing person story but also a murder mystery and a horrific story of human trafficking and prostitution. The author keeps the story this side of tolerable—he doesn‘t show more go into gruesome details—even though you know they‘re there. He‘s an extraordinary storyteller and writer. The level of detail, for example, the meals they eat, what the weather (& the traffic) feels like, reading his books is an immersive experience. His 4th book in this series is out in August. And I‘ll have to start his Detective Darko series soon. Highly recommended. show less

Inspector Darko Dawson of the Ghana Police Service in Accra is called to a polluted lagoon when the body of a young man is discovered, already in a state of decomposition. In the heat of Accra, it is difficult to determine the time of death but it is not difficult to see that he died of a stab wound in the back that destroyed the lung.

The call to the police has come from a nine year-old boy, Sly, who, by calling the authorities, has broken the main rule of the street community: never talk to show more the police. The site of the body dump is known as “Sodom and Gomorrah”, the nickname for Agbogbloshie, the most dangerous slum in Accra. “Roaming the open land bordered by the Ring Road on the west and the edge of the Odaw River on the east were a few grazing horses and a herd of placid, foraging cows, brought all the way from the northern territories by migrants who had lived as nomads. It was a bizarre mixing of rural lifestyle with the urban slum. Only in Accra, Dawson thought. Only in Accra.”

When other children of the street are found, all killed in the same way and with mutilations specific to each killing, no one doubts the presence of a serial killer. With as many as 60,000 children living on the streets, there is no dearth of possible victims. There is also no dearth of suspects including a street child who poses great danger to the younger children and a sociologist who sees the children as statistics for his dissertation.

The children on the streets of Accra have come to the cosmopolitan city because it is here that money can be found. They don’t understand until it is too late that the money is in the hands of those who keep to the parts of the city where the children are unseen. Even those who claim to be working to save the children don’t see them as valuable human beings. In the pants of one of the victims, the police find a business card. SCOAR (Street Children of Accra) is a group led by Genevieve Kusi who has established a refuge for the children to use by day. When one of the leaders of the group is brought to the attention of Darko, the man explodes, referring to the children of the street as worthless. “These aren’t street children we’re dealing with, Inspector Dawson, these are street vermin.”

Darko cannot forget Sly, who has disappeared from the streets of the slum. Hosiah, Darko’s son, is in desperate need of heart surgery, something beyond the financial reach of his parents. When Darko thinks of Hosiah, he thinks of Sly, the same age but with such a different experience of life. He is surrounded by the faces of children.

Inspector Dawson has an enviable home life, a loving wife, an adored son. But he is not a man without complications. He is haunted by an addiction. He can be consumed by a rage that brings him close to crossing the line when dealing with suspects. But he is a good man to the core and he will do his job to the best of his ability as long as he serves in the police service.

WIFE OF THE GODS is an outstanding book, one of the best I read in 2010. CHILDREN OF THE STREET is its equal although the books are different. In the first book, the author tells a story that straddles the worlds of Ghana – the country that still holds to some of the old ways and its superstitions but one that is also firmly placed in the twenty-first century. The western world is introduced to the practice of trokosi, young girls being given to the priests at shrines in payment for answered prayers, a practice that can still be found in some parts of Ghana.

CHILDREN OF THE STREET is, to the shame of all nations, a twenty-first century story. The abandonment of children is the result of the abandonment of the belief in the collective societal responsibility toward the young. The number of children, from early to late teenage years, who are abandoned to foster care systems or who are runaways forced to work the streets for food and a bed, are not confined to other nations. They are in every city, hiding in plain sight, terrified they are going to be returned to the places from which they fled. Armah, Darko’s mentor, tells him that sometimes, in murder cases as with medical problems, it is necessary to take the long view. “Sometimes you just have to let the disease declare itself.” ( If this is the philosophy of the author, Kwei Quartey, M.D., his patients are most fortunate in their choice of doctor). In the case of throw-away children, there isn’t anytime for patience.

Dr. Quartey is a masterful story-teller. He knows he is writing for a readership that likely knows little about Ghana in particular and Africa in general. He guides the readers to a grasp of the culture and the circumstances in which his characters live by making the introduction of this information an integral part of the story. We are being taught without realizing that a lesson is being presented. Darko and his wife, Christine, are two of the most likable and “real” characters in mystery fiction. show less

When Marcelo Tetteh, a Ghanaian gay activist, is found brutally hacked to death, his father hires the Sowah private investigation agency to find who was responsible. Given the climate in Ghana, he doubts the police will expend much effort investigating the crime. Local politicians and the public have been whipped up by a visiting American couple who preach homophobia as a religious obligation. Their organization, the International Congress of Families, has been promoting harsh anti-gay show more legislation throughout Africa with appearances at mega-churches. Since Tetteh had recently protested at one of their glitzy celebrity-style gatherings, leading to a brawl, his father believes the murder was a hate crime. But until they know more, Sowah and his staff look at every angle.

Emma Djan knows that one of her colleagues, Jojo, has a secret: he, too, is gay. Since he once had a relationship with Tetteh, he's given another assignment while she and Manu, whom she never got along with, go undercover to investigate the evangelical organization while also following up on the possibility a relationship gone sour was behind the crime.

Pretending to be an avid volunteer, Emma gets inside the American organization while Manu tracks down the coalition they are developing with churches and a local traditional leader. But it doesn't take long for another body to surface – one of Tetteh's love interests has been similarly hacked to death with machetes. Soon, a transgender artist and friend of Jojo is threatened, too, as the climate for resistance to the new legislation grows increasingly dangerous.

As we follow Emma's efforts to solve the murders, we also gain insight into the toxic relationship of the glamorous American couple who are working up crowds with their religious family-themed message of hate. They, and the Ghanaian religious and political leaders who are promoting violence, are hardly paragons of virtue. Quartey does a good job of making their foibles complex and human while also illustrating the scriptural verse of the title: pious leaders are often, like whitewashed tombs, hiding their own hypocritical corruption.

It's not often that mysteries come with a content warning. After all, readers are used to all kinds of gory violence. In this case, the material is disturbing in a different way. In addition to being a well-plotted mystery that makes good use of an appealing heroine, Quartey is calling attention to a very real issue, which as a gay Ghanaian himself is personal. For the past twenty years, American evangelicals have been radicalizing Africans against LGBTQ+ individuals and their supporters through missionary appeals, leading to repressive and dangerous laws in Ghana and other countries.

That said, Quartey hasn't sacrificed a good story for a message. It's a compelling mystery with a foundation in a real issue, something that is true of all of his mysteries. This fourth entry in the Emma Djan series continues to build on strengths and will inform as well as entertain its readers. show less