Brief Mention: LAST SEEN IN LAPAZ, by Kwei Quartey

Collecting international crime fiction? Ghana-born physician and author Kwei Quartey's Darko Dawson series, set mostly in Ghana, has been a pleasure; Quartey's current series is a spinoff that features Emma Djan, a private detective always alert to gender discrimination as she works her way up in a local agency (the police force dumped her, early in the series).

LAST SEE IN LAPAZ opens with the disappearance of a young Nigerian woman, daughter of a friend of the agency owner. (Lapaz is a town in the Accra Metropolitan District -- not related at all to La Paz, New Mexico.)  The attractive and hard-working Ngozi seems to have run away from home, across the national border, and might be in Accra. If, that is, she's alive.

Emma Djan isn't yet authorized to do a lot of investigation on her own, but she has an advantage here, because she can perform a flirtatious role with the greedy (in every sense) hotel owners who seem linked to the disappearance. When one hotel turns out to be supplying female companions, perhaps forced into this upscale prostitution, Emma's both horrified and fascinated. Anything to avoid the boredom of routine PI work!

Her insight into women's lives also gives her an advantage as she investigates with Boateng, the local DI (inspector on the police force):

Boateng grunted. "You seem to be studying this room closely, Djan. What do you see?"

"No disorder, no chaos. It has a controlled feeling. Someone who has been in this room was trying to gain control over the other, but couldn't quite do it. ... This entire house is a clue."

Despite his California location, Quartey's writing continues to have the choppy feel of translated material, possibly an intentional effect to suggest the movement among local languages and dialects. The book suffers somewhat from quick changes in point of view, among investigators and criminals. But it's still a revelatory experience of urban life in Ghana, and neatly plotted, with caste and related attitudes deftly portrayed. 

Collect it for your African mystery shelf, as well as for the diverse spread of Soho Crime's continued global outreach.

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

Michael Stanley, A DEADLY COVENANT, A Detective Kubu Mystery

The mysteries by Michael Stanley—a pen name for the team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip—have a somewhat muddled publishing history. A DEADLY COVENANT is the seventh in the team's Detective Kubu series, and is published by White Sun Books, which only publishes this author ... so is probably best defined as self-publishing. Still, it's worth taking a look at this title to add it to the shelf if you've started a collection of the series, or have an interest in Sub-Saharan Africa as a locale for mysteries.

"Kubu" is a nickname that means hippopotamus, for Detective Sergeant David Bengu of the Bostwana Criminal Investigation Department. It's an unfortunate nickname, prone to disrespect, but this detective usually feels he's made a connection with people when they start using it. (Glass half full.) Being sent on a five-day trip to distant Shakawe with the department's pathologist, Ian MacGregor, looks likely to expose all of Kubu's insecurities and inexperience. But MacGregor is genial and supportive, and at first it looks like they just need to identify a long-buried skeleton as human, so an irrigation project can continue.

However, the crime scene quickly grows complicated, with multiple Bushman bodies suggesting a long-ago massacre; then a local counsellor gets murdered, and Kubu finds himself in the minority in believing that the lone Bushman is the area might not be responsible. Not only is he swimming upstream against prejudice against the Bushman, but there's some sort of collusion going on in the settlement's government and those pressing the water project forward. 

Eventually, Kubu learns some ways to keep the investigation going, like telling a local leader, "We don't want some civil-rights lawyer getting the Bushman off on the grounds that we did a bad job, do we?"

The mystery moves briskly and has an intriguing plot. It does, however, feel a bit dated, in both the clumsiness of the investigation and the local real estate corruption, and in Detective Kubu's unsophisticated approach. Those who prefer ethnic portrayals to be written by members of those ethnic groups will find this an uncomfortable narrative. This again suggests that the series is no longer timely. Like Arthur Upfield's "Bony" series set in Australia, Michael Stanley's books represent a very different time with different expectations of both authors and characters.

Despite this caution, the books have support from Ghanaian-American author Kwei Quartey. So, go ahead a pick up the latest in the series—then let your thoughts engage with our changing cultures, while you watch Kubu solve the multiplying crimes around him.

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

Predictably Charming New Mystery from Alexander McCall Smith, HOW TO RAISE AN ELEPHANT

 [Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Mma Ramotswe and her allies practice that love of land and courtesy to each other in gently amusing ways that eventually resolve the mysteries, potential crimes, and tensions of their lives. In a time of pandemic, there could be few more rewarding and soothing tales to read than How to Raise an Elephant.”

AlexanderMcCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series can be relied on for tender and kind surprises, and the reliability of love and trust among the main characters. Of course they have their flaws—Precious Ramotswe, who leads the unusual detective agency in Bostwana, is a woman of “traditional build” and careful attention to the guidance found in her detection manual written by Clovis Andersen. She can thus be a little short-sighted, and a bit hard-wearing on her small but practical van. Her assistant, Mma Makutsi, a secretarial school graduate with big dreams, tends to be suspicious and not very generous in her assessments of potential clients. And then there is Charlie, the brash youth employed parttime by the Mma Ramotswe and parttime in the adjoining car repair business of her husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

In How to Raise and Elephant, the first mystery provided is fairly readily solved: The bent tailgate of the detective agency’s van and its powerful earthy scent after Charlie borrows it lead directly to the apprentice’s use of the van to transport a baby elephant. But Charlie’s neighborhood is not at all suitable for a growing elephant, even though it appears to consider him its mother.

There had been many occasions in the past when they had been obliged to clear up some mess left by Charlie. They could remain uninvolved if they discovered somebody else was looking after an elephant—such an elephant would be none of their business—but there was a sense in which any elephant in Charlie’s keeping was their problem, or soon would become just that.

And negotiating a future home for the friendly but ungainly beast requires all of the skills in courtesy and gentle teasing that Mma Ramotswe can summon.

Meanwhile, the detective agency owner has a family-related plea for financial assistance that Mma Makutsi mistrusts. Whether to believe the sad tale of a relative and donate accordingly requires attentive investigation, according to the best principles of detection.

Alexander McCall Smith’s storytelling provides great charm, as he unravels the experience and thinking of his rural but increasingly wise protagonists. A classic example is how Mma Ramotswe ponders the role of royalty, including the Queen and the Queen’s son, Prince Charles:

And there was Prince Charles, who she knew loved Bostwana. When he came again to visit the country, she would try to invite him for tea. He would be too busy to come, of course, and there were people around him who would fend off invitations, but she knew they would have a great deal to talk about: about the rains and the crops; about looking after the world; about remembering when all is said and done, we lived on the land and had to give the land the love that it needed if it was to continue to provide for us.

Mma Ramotswe and her allies practice that love of land and courtesy to each other in gently amusing ways that eventually resolve the mysteries, potential crimes, and tensions of their lives. In a time of pandemic, there could be few more rewarding and soothing tales to read than How to Raise an Elephant.

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

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!

New Today from Taylor Stevens: THE CATCH

About twice a year I wish I lived near Texas ... and now is one of those times. Not for the climate, or the urban traffic, but for the presence of Taylor Stevens, talking with readers at her release events this week for THE CATCH, the fourth in the grimly satisfying suspense series that features Vanessa Michael Munroe -- better known simply as Munroe, for good reasons.

Lacking the Texas journey, I'll settle for re-reading THE CATCH. An advance copy arrived here a couple of months ago, and it was really hard to wait until the release month, so I gave in and devoured the book early ... and it's stayed with me ever since.

Munroe became an iconic character as of book 1 in the series, The Informationist. A multilingual expert in digesting information at a level that's of value to big corporations and syndicates, Munroe is also the product of an extremely abusive childhood, one that's given her good reason to prefer the anonymity of dressing like a slender young man, and made her -- for survival's sake -- highly proficient in martial arts and out-thinking very smart criminals and syndicates.

But books 2 and 3, The Innocent and The Doll, have further wounded, even crippled, Munroe emotionally, and at the opening of THE CATCH she's hiding in male guise, working for a small maritime security company in Djibouti, Africa, with a relatively simple commercial job to do. If she'd applied her brilliance to her own life -- granted, hard for any of us to do -- she might have realized the respite would be temporary. Events quickly overwhelm her best intentions, as her boss forces her into armed guard work on a ship bound for Kenya ... via the Somalian coast.

Following Taylor Stevens into the dark and violent menace of Somalian high-seas piracy is an exhilarating journey into today's "darkest Africa," where poverty and greed and vast chasms of opportunity create the ultimate criminal wonderland. Munroe's quick conclusion that a highjacking of the ship she's guarding isn't what it seems leads her to escape with a hostage, the ship's putative captain. But she's seriously wounded, unable to defend herself and her hostage with her usual skills, and even her quick linguistic gifts send her into increasing danger.

When Munroe finds an information broker who may be able to help her crack the multiple shells of criminal plans surrounding her ship's highjacking, she's inwardly elated but must stay in grim persona, driving a bargain for what she needs with this Somali hawaladar, broker of information and money:

"Not CIA?" he said.

She shook her head.

"What agency then?"

"None," she said. "Just an individual."

"With money to spare, and you speak my language."

She nodded.

"There's no way to guarantee you're telling the truth?"

"None," she said. "But I don't want anything from you that might incriminate you."

He shifted forward again, deeper against the desk than he had before, so that his face was closer to hers, his expression clouded with mistrust and accusation. "If there are no demands for ransom and the ship disappeared, where does your information come from? How do you know a ship was hijacked?"

"I was on it," she said. ... "If the hijacking was paid for by Somali money, then tell me nothing, return me half the money, and I'll be on my way. If it was foreign investment, then I only ask that you give me whatever rumors are passing through on the wind, and the payment is yours."

It's not that simple, of course, and Munroe's adaptations to being wounded and ill make her in some ways more like "the rest of us" for this adventure -- more vulnerable, more at risk, more dependent on friendship. Except ... her emotional wounds have cut her off from the very people she most trusts and needs, the ones who've worked with her and care about her, even if they don't always understand her. And in the midst of trying to stay alive and resolve the crimes and free up the people for whom she has taken responsibility, Munroe also needs to resolve her relationship with her past -- and future.

I'm grateful that I could stay in the cool green safety of the Vermont hills to read this one, even though I'd love to hear Stevens talk about her research in person (she often does so online; best bet is her Facebook feed, where she shares links to some of her appearances). Today's Somalian piracy and the intricacies of Muslim life in Africa also intrigue me, so I like finding them in THE CATCH. Most of all, though, it's Munroe I enjoy and want more of: a wounded superhero of a woman, caught up in international intrigue, struggling for breathing space and for the capacity to trust.

Nigerian Mystery: FOREIGN GODS INC, Okey Ndibe

From Nigerian Okey Ndibe, who teaches African literature at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut -- and whose political commentaries have a long track record (http://www.okeyndibe.com/index.html) -- comes a crime novel that crosses Donald Westlake with Saul Bellow and Joseph Conrad. Published through Soho Press (not the Crime division), it challenges genre boundaries and indulges in a delicious chunk of paranormal ... or is it all in the mind of Ikechukwu Uzondu after all?

This upscale cab driver with the nickname of Ike -- not pronounced like Eisenhower's nickname, but rather as "Ee-kay" -- was named "God's strength" in his Nigerian family. Yet it seems his life's barren of grace. With a degree from a prestigious American college and a marvelous resumé, Ike can't get the bank or corporate jobs he longs for ... due to his charming but "difficult" accent, a residue of the Old Country. Nor has he fulfilled his mother's expectations for him; he has even stopped sending money to her, and never even told her about his American marriage, which has already failed.

But Ike has plans: He's found a very, very upscale New York City gallery that sells "foreign gods" and he's going to go home to Nigeria and kidnap the one that his family tends, a wooden item that's been endowed with the spirit of the god of war: Ngene. And by selling this to the gallery, he will finally be rich and well regarded.

This isn't an art theft thriller -- it's way more complicated than that. Because Ngene really has power (as do the other "foreign gods" already at the gallery!), and Ike is clueless about the depth of trouble he's stepping into. In his struggle to achieve American success, he's tangling with Old Ways that haven't lost their power. He should have guessed his own ties to those ways, from what happens to him each time there's a storm ...

FOREIGN GODS INC follows the Donald Westlake path because it's a caper novel and involves (oh, lovely!) taxi cabs ... Saul Bellow in Henderson the Rain King comes to mind as Ike tangles with forces of nature he's forgotten about ... and the malevolence of Heart of Darkness underlies the inevitable disaster ahead, one that the reader knows is coming, long before Ike realizes what he's done to his own dreams and life. Let this be the first on your Nigerian mysteries shelf -- or shelve it next to that master of well-meant criminal disaster, Donald Westlake himself. It's a worthy companion!