Part of Series
Vicious hate crimes are rocking the LGBTQ+ community in Accra, and prejudice and politics threaten to stymie PI Emma Djan’s efforts to find the killer. Author Kwei Quartey tackles a timely and deeply personal issue as a very-real anti-gay bill threatens to tear Ghana apart if ratified by the president. Marcelo Tetteh, a twenty-seven-year-old LGBTQ activist, is butchered to death one night after being lured on Grindr to a deserted building site. With high instances of homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer, so he goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out. Emma is assigned the case, but quickly learns of a complication that prevents her from teaming up as usual with Jojo, her trusted colleague. Emma is the only one at work who knows Jojo is gay, and now he reveals something else: for some time, Jojo was dating Marcelo, the victim. Working with Manu, whom she’s never gotten along with at work, Emma goes undercover in several organizations including International Congress of Families, a powerful organization seeking to criminalize homosexuality in African countries. As Emma infiltrates the ICF, she uncovers a web of deceit and hypocrisy and discovers that the mastermind behind the murders is someone much closer than she ever imagined. Emma must race against time to unmask the killer, protect the vulnerable LGBTQ community, and bring justice to the victims, all while navigating the dangerous waters of politics, power, and personal secrets.
Author
KWEI QUARTEY Biography Kwei Quartey is a crime fiction writer and physician based in Pasadena, California. In 2018, having practiced medicine for more than 15 years while simultaneously working as a writer, Quartey finally retired from medical practice to become a full-time novelist. Prior to that, though, he had balanced the two professions by dedicating the early morning hours to writing before beginning each day in his clinic. Quartey was born in Ghana, West Africa, to a Ghanaian father and Black American mother, both of whom were lecturers at the University of Ghana. Quartey describes how his family’s home was full of hundreds of books, both fiction and nonfiction, which inspired him to write novellas as early as the age of eight or nine. By then, Quartey was certain he wanted to be an author. But his interests shifted by the time he was a teenager, when he decided he wanted to be a doctor. Quartey began on a science-to-medicine track in secondary school. After the death of his father, Quartey’s mother returned to the United States. By then, Quartey had already begun medical school in Ghana. Transferring to a medical school in the United States wasn’t easy, but he successfully gained admission to Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. After graduation from his residency training in Internal Medicine, Kwei Quartey returned to his love of writing. He went to a UCLA extension course in creative writing, and wrote two novels while in a writing group that met every Wednesday evening. But it would be a few years yet before Quartey would create the Inspector Darko Dawson series. As a crime fiction writer, Kwei made the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List in 2009. The following year, the GOG National Book Club voted him Best Male Author. The five Inspector Darko Dawson novels, set in Ghana, are WIFE OF THE GODS, CHILDREN OF THE STREET, MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS, GOLD OF OUR FATHERS, and DEATH BY HIS GRACE. Two novels, KAMILA and DEATH AT THE VOYAGER HOTEL (e-book) are non-Darko books. In January 2020, Quartey’s new detective series launched to critical acclaim with THE MISSING AMERICAN, the debut of the Emma Djan Investigations and the introduction of the first West African female private eye in fiction. The second in the series, SLEEP WELL, MY LADY, was released January 12, 2021, immediately garnering attention for its unusual style of time shifts in relation to the crime. THE MISSING AMERICAN was nominated for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel, and won the 2021 Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel. LAST SEEN IN LAPAZ, the third Emma Djan novel, was released February 2023, and the fourth, THE WHITEWASHED TOMBS, is expected 2024.
