Ghana Crime Fiction from Kwei Quartey, DEATH BY HIS GRACE

As crime fiction author Kwei Quartey continues to develop his investigative protagonist, Chief Inspector Darko Dawson of the Ghanaian federal police, his writing is growing more intense, more focused, more compelling. You might be the first in your circle of friends to read him -- even though he's already been on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list -- but my experience is, there are a LOT of people I'd like to give his books to, right away. Could there be any better measure of a crime novel?

First, here's a capsule summary of Quartey himself: "Kwei Quartey writes early in the morning before setting out to work at HealthCare Partners, where he runs a wound care clinic and is the lead physician at an urgent care center."

Right? Also, as Quartey's author website mentions, he makes sure to experience for himself the events he'll be describing. For one of his Darko Dawson books, that meant that he "underwent training to enable him to travel on a chopper taking oil workers from shore to the deep-sea rig, which occurs in the story. The training includes how to escape from a helicopter that has crashed in the ocean."

Here at Kingdom Books, Quartey's work (via Soho Crime) has been well liked in the past (reviews here). But DEATH BY HIS GRACE takes the narrative to a more polished level; asks deeper questions (like, how do you compare suspicion of local witchcraft, with manipulation in a big church congregation); and positions Darko Dawson to grow as an investigator who can step beyond his comfort level to see what's motivating the crimes in front of him.

At the heart of the story is a marriage made by a relative of Darko's wife Christine: one in which the new bride isn't getting pregnant on schedule, and the in-laws launch an attack on the marriage on grounds of witchcraft. The bride's side of the conflict involves a minister of a "superchurch" (the kind with huge crowds and management teams). When the conflict turns violent, then deadly, the obvious suspect is of course a spouse -- but what if the extended family members committed the actual crime? Or simply incited it, out of envy and malice?

Further, does the family connection mean Darko shouldn't even be involved here?

Darko was experiencing conflict. Typically, he would have allowed the cumbersome CID machinery to determine how a homicide would be assigned, but this time the murder victim was a family member. Should he lobby to be the chief investigator? The answer wasn't that clear-cut for Darko.

And the situation gets even more complicated when Darko's mother-in-law, always ready to judge him as deficient, demands that he take the case.

Quartey's storytelling has the feel of translated work, even though he's clearly embedded in American culture himself; the slight tilt of the words (more direct narrative, and a quicker pace as a result) gives the book the feel of being "told" by a Ghanaian voice, adding to the experience of exploring this African nation via the experience and views of the characters. Highly recommended -- and published by Soho Crime, at the peak of international crime fiction.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Ghana Mystery, GOLD OF OUR FATHERS, Kwei Quartey

In this fourth in the Darko Dawson investigations (there's also a novella), Darko's just been promoted to Chief Inspector in the Ghana Police Service, which ought to call for celebration -- especially because Darko's own promotion follows that of his cantankerous boss Theophilus Lartey. Readers of the first three books in Ghanaian-American author Kwei Quartey's series -- Wife of the Gods, Children of the Streets, Murder at Three Points -- know that Lartey made things difficult for Darko Dawson and especially for Dawson's family, with frequent assignments away from the family home in Accra, where his wife Christine teaches school and his sons are finally thriving.

But the new Chief Superintendent Oppong, although an unexpectedly tidy and organized man and reasonably kind on the first day of teamwork, has rough news for Darko: a year-long transfer out of headquarters, to take charge of a police station in 160-miles-distant Obuasi where the head officer just died. Considering Ghana's roads and traffic and more, that's not a workable commute. Darko's entire family life will need rearranging, including the care for his more vulnerable son Hosiah.

Even as Darko Dawson's family changes its plans, Darko's racing to his new position, where the discovery of a murder in the muddy terrain of the gold mines brings immediate relief from trying to straighten out backlogged records, lazy staff, and more. It's enough to cheer Dawson up and give him the satisfaction of an urgent investigation of a crime.

GOLD OF OUR FATHERS reveals the power struggles of comparatively wealthy mine owners and a labor force of people who have little control over their lives. But it also portrays in a tender fashion the customs, traditions, and linguistic dances of Ghanaian life, from the finger snapping that accompanies a handshake, to traditional foods and courtesies. Plus in today's Ghana, the presence of the Chinese -- as both land investors and working people -- challenges the local ways of life. In his new position, Darko Dawson has little leverage and no quick way to his staff's needed loyalty. Good thing he figures out how to pull his former assistant from Accra to come help for a while!

Meanwhile, in this new location, the Chief Inspector confronts many temptations and bad practices that his Accra post no longer offered him, from bribes to an informant being beaten and, most dangerous for Darko Dawson, the frank interest of an intelligent woman, journalist Akua Helmsley:

"Chief Inspector," she said. "We meet again."

"And I'm sure not for the last time," he said, barely slowing his pace as he walked by, but she kept up with him.

"Progress?" she asked.

"Not much. ... The legal status of miners isn't my concern, Miss Helmsley."

Obeng got in the back seat with Wei.

"So, no prime suspect so far," Helmsley said. "Where are you going now?"

"To make some inquiries," Dawson said unhelpfully as he got into the front passenger seat.

"I'll check back with you in a couple of days," Helmsley said. "Is that okay?"

"Yes," Dawson replied, not sure he meant it.

The journalist clearly has a role in the pattern of crimes Dawson's investigating. But was she an innocent party? An instigator, creating news by pushing people toward confrontation? Or an investigator herself -- and if so, an honest one, or corrupt?

The layers and tangles add to Quartey's adept storytelling and make this a well-paced and intriguing crime investigation with significant human costs and caring. I'm enjoying the series very much -- if you haven't yet read the others, though, Quartey makes it easy to step into this fourth novel "cold" and get close to Dawson and his team.

GOLD OF OUR FATHERS is a police procedural with the twist of how policing struggles in an underdeveloped nation that's suffered the colonial boot and then desertion, open to the money and power of foreign corporations and individuals. So although the scenery and family conflicts may call to mind the gentle frictions of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, Quartey's books are closer in texture to, say, Archer Mayor's or William Kent Krueger's -- add them to your contemporary mysteries shelf, with the fresh spice of international flavor. Available now, from Soho Crime -- of course!

Ghana Crime Fiction: Kwei Quartey Succeeds with Third Darko Dawson Investigation

Spring is emphatically arriving on the East Coast, even here in Vermont, where the snowpack is melting noisily, water pouring downhill, birds calling, deer tentatively coming out of the woods to see what plant life around the house and shop might sustain them a bit longer. We have Weather in wild variety and landscape that's "American classic" -- mountains, rivers, fields.

So it's a powerful contrast to step into MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS, the newest Darko Dawson investigation from Kwei Quartey, and migrate to the oceanfront, the hot sand-swept cities, the land of tribal tradition, omens, and malicious magic.

Detective Inspector Darko Dawson isn't quite ready for what he's suddenly responsible for solving: the murder of a wealthy married couple of significance, a case that's lingered for months without solution and that "belongs" to the police in Takoradi, on the coast. Dawson is part of a federal police force headquartered in Ghana's capital city, Accra -- and his boss says firmly that with the socially important family member of the victims, requesting federal intervention on the case, Dawson must leave immediately to tackle the cold case.

Few situations could show so quickly how little choice Dawson has: His young son Hosiah's cardiac surgery is barely a day into recovery, and Dawson and his family expect him on hand. But there is no way to decline the case without losing his job, and soon Dawson's on a State Transport bus to Takoradi, where -- without travel stipend or other support --  he's persuaded a relative to let him stay in an unfinished building. It's basic but workable; still, when his superintendent sends along an assistant (who happens to be the superintendent's nephew), the plush hotel lodgings that the assistant investigator receives throw into further perspective Dawson's perilous position. He's got to solve this case to maintain his own forward progress.

But what a case! Is there traditional magic involved? And is there significance to the location of the victims' bodies, in a canoe near an oil rig? Dawson juggles the facts as they emerge -- and for some of them, he has to handle the region's ladder of prestige and power, just to get the details:

His mind flitted over the events of the past two days like an undecided humming bird. Instinctively, he felt that the Smith-Aidoo murder had greater breadth and depth than any of his previous cases. Two corpses in a canoe adrift around a deep-sea oil rig, a severed head with an excavated eye socket, a nineteenth-century pocket watch with a scrawled inscription invoking blood ties. What did it all mean?

Kwei Quartey left Ghana after spending time in jail there for political protest, and became an American physician, still in practice in Southern California (more info here). Returning to visit Ghana as a prosperous adult, in 2008, he resumed connections with the west African nation. This is his third book featuring Detective Inspector Dawson -- the others are Wife of the Gods and Children of the Street. Reading MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS without the other two isn't a problem, as Quartey deftly brushes in the needed details ... but his protagonist is such a thoughtful and hard-working investigator that I think many readers will want to fill in the rest of the series for themselves. I'm not likely to have a chance to see Ghana in person, so I particularly appreciate being able to travel there in this way, through the eyes of an author who experiences multiple cultures, and a police officer who has reason to challenge his environment. I'm looking forward to more.