Gold of Our Fathers

Starred review from February 8, 2016
Quartey’s exceptional fourth Darko Dawson mystery (after 2014’s Murder at Cape Three Points) takes the Accra, Ghana, policeman, recently promoted to chief inspector, to the remote town of Obuasi. There he must work with the inept and undisciplined local police, whose deficiencies handicap him in investigating the murder of Bao Liu, a Chinese mine owner. Bao is but one of the many Chinese who have moved to Ghana to exploit, illegally, the country’s rich gold reserves, a practice the government is incapable of stopping, or else unwilling to. Dawson has a number of suspects to question, including Bao’s disgruntled workers, and a local who blames Bao for his son’s death. He gets an ally in a journalist, Akua Helmsley, who suspects government collusion in the environmental damage wrought by the illegal miners. The revelation of the key clue is especially clever, and fans of mysteries that offer a window into another culture will be more than satisfied. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff Literary Agency.

March 1, 2016
Darko Dawson (Murder at Cape Three Points, 2014, etc.) is seconded to Obuasi, far from his home base in Accra, just in time to catch a particularly brutal murder. Dawson should know better than to celebrate his recent promotion to Chief Inspector, which turns out to be just one more reason he'd be the perfect person to send to Ghana's Ashanti region when the ailing local CID chief dies. Scarcely has he formed his first impressions of his inefficient and insubordinate constables and Ata Longdon, his bullying commander, than word comes that mineworker Kudzo Gablah and his crew have discovered the body of Bao Liu, their exacting boss, buried in one of the mines they're working. Bao's brother, Wei Liu, who moves and washes the corpse, ostensibly to avoid shocking new widow Lian Liu, is the obvious suspect, but once he proves an alibi, Dawson must look elsewhere. He finds a powerful motive in Bao's unrequited flirtation with Comfort, the girlfriend of neighboring farmer Amos Okoh, whose brother, Yaw Okoh, swore vengeance after a quarrel between Amos and Bao left the former dead and the latter unpunished. Despite procuring a confession to Bao's murder, Dawson is still dissatisfied. That's just as well, because a Ghanaian task force decides that these private crimes are less important than the corruption introduced to the region by the gold mines illegally owned and operated by Chinese interlopers like the Liu brothers. Dawson finds himself caught between warring factions--not just the good guys and the bad guys, but the good guys and the not-so-good guys. Despite some serious problems with pacing--successive mysteries and solutions seem to pop up and recede at the author's whim--Quartey presents tonic news for Americans who assume that Europeans were the most calamitous force ever to strike Ghana.

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November 1, 2015

The latest entry in the series sees the Ghanaian detective receiving a promotion and an order to move from Accra to a remote, and corrupt, mining area.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2016
This is the fourth in Quartey's Inspector Darko Dawson series, set in contemporary Ghana. Dawson, based in the capital city of Accra with a greatly loved wife and family, wants nothing more than to stay in Accra. But a promotion to chief inspector in the Ghana Police Service comes with a stinga reassignment to Obuasi in the Ashanti region, where gold mines scar the land, and illegal mining by foreigners exploits the Ghanaian people. The Chinese manager of one of the gold mines is discovered dead and buried in gold ore. Dawson has to rely heavily on interviewing rather than forensics here, since the victim's family moved the body from the crime scene and washed it before any analysis could be done. But Dawson is a formidable interviewer and psychologist. He uncovers another murder, an especially chilling one, performed by the victim shortly before his golden burial. Quartey presents a good-hearted policeman in a noir world of exploitation and corruption. Fans of this series will also want to check out Malla Nunn's South African mysteries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)