Death by His Grace

June 12, 2017
Murder strikes close to home in Quartey’s disappointing fifth mystery featuring Ghanaian Chief Insp. Darko Dawson (after 2016’s Gold of Our Fathers). When Darko arrives at the scene of a double homicide, he’s shaken to discover that one of the victims is Katherine Vanderpuye, his wife Christine’s beloved cousin. Katherine was butchered with a machete, her head practically severed; her watchman, Gabriel, was also almost decapitated. Katherine was experiencing difficulty in her marriage. Her inability to conceive alienated her attorney husband, Solomon, and turned his family against her. Solomon’s relatives accused her of being a witch, and Solomon claimed that she was deliberately remaining barren and was trying to poison him. Despite Darko’s familial connection with the crime, he’s kept on the case. He diligently considers suspects besides Solomon, including the flamboyant Bishop Clem Howard-Mills, who had been counseling the unhappy couple. The solution to the whodunit is not as clever as in Quartey’s previous, more memorable books. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary Agency.

June 15, 2017
If his fourth case (Gold of Our Fathers, 2016) took him far from his base in Accra, Chief Inspector Darko Dawson's fifth strikes entirely too close to home.A year after accountant Katherine Yeboah's storybook marriage to rising attorney Solomon Vanderpuye, the magic is gone with a vengeance. Katherine's inability to get pregnant despite her bridegroom's undisputed virility has turned her husband's class-conscious mother, Maude, and his equally sniffy sister, Georgina, against her. Months of counseling sessions with Clem Howard-Mills, the millionaire bishop who married the unhappy couple, have gone nowhere, and Solomon, echoing his mother's accusations that Kate is a witch, demands that she leave the house he's surreptitiously retitled in his name alone. James Bentsi-Enchill, the divorce lawyer Kate's mother urges her to consult, is an old flame of Kate's who's divorced himself. Can things get any worse? Absolutely. The night before Kate's due to move out, she's savagely attacked by a killer who also murders houseman Gabriel Saleh for good measure. The events leading up to the massacre are described with such harrowing precision that Darko's investigation would be utterly overshadowed if he weren't Kate's brother-in-law, a sorely vexed cop whose every question seems to invite another prevarication or false alibi and whose every move threatens to antagonize another member of his extended family--except of course for his father, Jacob, who's too sadly demented to notice or care what's going on. The only bright spot, it seems, is Lance Cpl. Mabel Kusi, the new transfer Darko's breaking in, who'll take center stage at the finale. The most conventional of the Ghanaian Chief Inspector's five mysteries but the most personally shocking in every imaginable way for the hard-pressed hero.

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June 1, 2017

Katherine and Solomon's extravagant high society wedding in Accra, Ghana, was a triumph. But when she is unable to conceive, her new husband and his family turn against her and accuse her of witchcraft. Katherine desperately seeks help from her family, friends, and pastor to resolve her marital issues. Her brutal murder draws CI Darko Dawson of the Ghanaian federal police into the case since Katherine was a cousin to his wife, Christine. As he investigates, Dawson also wrestles with how best to care for his aging and ailing father. He successfully lays a trap to catch the killer, but that comes with potentially fatal consequences. The fifth Darko Dawson book (after Gold of Our Fathers) explores the role of religion, both traditional Ghanian and evangelical Christian, in a vividly depicted African setting. Series fans may be stunned by the suddenness of the unexpected cliff-hanger ending, but it mirrors the rapidity of real life. VERDICT A good choice for readers who enjoy Michael Stanley's "Detective Kubu" series.--ACT

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Starred review from August 1, 2017
When fertility problems strain newlywed Katherine and Solomon Vanderpuye's marriage, Katherine begins counseling with her celebrity evangelist minister. While she works on reconciliation, her in-laws are poisoning Solomon's mind with accusations that she's a witch intent on killing him and their unborn children. Their tactics succeed, and Kate is soon packing her things. But the night before her move, she is murdered at her home in Accra, Ghana. Accra's CID Director Darko Dawson is called to the scene by his distraught wife, who found Kate's house crawling with police when she arrived to help her cousin move. The last thing Darko wants is a case certain to strain family relations, but his commanding officer sees things differently. Darko and a trainee detective, one of Accra's few female officers, must sort through a host of potential suspectsthe charismatic evangelist, Kate's prominent in-laws, and a disturbed stalkerto find the machete-wielding killer. In the series' fifth installment (following Gold of Our Fathers, 2016), Darko is tested by his duty to his in-laws and increasingly challenging roles as son and father, complications that add layers to a skillfully developed character and build suspense toward a jaw-dropping cliff-hanger. Quartey's Ghanaian mysteries, driven by tension between traditional culture and modernity, share top-notch writing and full-sensory settings with those of Michael Stanley, Deon Meyer, and Parker Bilal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)