In Ghana, getting an education doesn’t promise a successful life but being a sakawa boy does. They answer to fetish priests who bestow magical powers on the sakawa boys in return for ghoulish tasks they perform for the priests. Sakawa boys run sophisticated internet scams on Americans. In this story, an American falls in love with a realistic woman, gives her money for an emergency, and travels to meet her. When he learns she doesn’t exist he begins investigating and then goes missing. New private detective Emma Djan is on the case, finds him, and then gets dragged into the sakawa world and police corruption. Excellent mystery, exceptional story, eloquently written. Highly recommended. ( )

Emma Djan has just been fired by the Accra police department because she refused the advances of the police chief. She lands a job with the city’s top detective agency and is quickly involved in locating an American, Gordon Tilson. He has come to Ghana to meet Helena, with whom he has fallen in love. The problem is that this is all part of an elaborate Internet fraud scheme to attract a naive, well to do American to pay for Helena’s cousin’s surgery….
This is a very good detective story involving police corruption, online fraud, murder, voodoo, interesting characters and a very good depiction of Emma and her abilities as a detective.
Highly Recommended ( )

Interesting mystery set in Ghana. ( )

A new series by Quartey (not Darko Dawson), featuring 26-year-old Emma Djan, who is fired from her boring procedural police job for not succumbing to sexual harassment. A homicide department colleague of her deceased father refers Emma to a private detective agency in Gabon. This agency is hired by American Derek Tilson to find his father Gordon, missing several weeks since arriving in Ghana, the victim of an elaborate internet romance scam, because the local police and U.S. embassy have not helped. Emma has to investigate the world of scammers (and their strange dependence on fetish priests, who promise them power and success, if they partake in horrifying rituals) as well as rampant political and police corruption. Gordon Tilson's stupidity, egged on by his dying journalist friend, is in a word, monumental. ( )

This is one of the more interesting mysteries that I have read in a long while.

We’re flung head first into the social niceties of Ghana when an American flies to Ghana, believing that he has found his ideal woman. Instead, he finds that she does not exist, and he is the victim of a scam.

An American journalist friend convinces him that to stay in Ghana and track down the scam would make an excellent story. Our American reluctantly agrees. He talks to the scammers known as Sakawa boys, authorities, including one whose wife he briefly had an affair with in the States, and even a traditional priest whose magic looks very dark indeed.

But then he goes dark. After several weeks with no contact, his son arrives in Ghana to look for him and ends up at the detective agency where Emma Dian is newly employed. Emma has had her own experience with corrupt cops and has had her hopes of working with the police force dashed.

This is an interesting look at the online scams – everything from programs designed to help the scam along, to officials not really believing that Americans being scammed is much of a problem.

I’m looking forward to the next Emma Dian novel. ( )

I do not read as much crime fiction, as I used to. I read a steady diet of it, in the 80s and 90s but I like reading one, now and then and this crime novel, the first in a series, was quite enjoyable. Set mostly in Ghana, it features an ex-cop private investigator, who is looking into an American, who has gone missing in her country. She makes an engaging sleuth. ( )

The Missing American by Kwei Quartey is a 2020 Soho Crime publication.

A promising start to a new series!

Emma Djan wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps by becoming a homicide detective. She finally makes it into the police force, but her dreams of working homicide go horribly awry when she is kicked off the force. Thankfully, she lands on her feet getting hired on as a private detective, working for Yemo Sowah, also a former cop.

The first case Emma is assigned is that of a missing American man, Gordon Tilson, who had flown to Ghana to meet a woman he met online.

Upon arrival, Gordon realizes he has been duped,that the woman he was to meet, never existed. Gordon, feeling quite embarrassed, plans his return to the US immediately. But, an old friend of his curiously pressures him to stay in the country and enjoy himself for a few days, then suggest the scammers should not go unpunished, thus convincing Gordon to some investigating. But, before he makes much headway, he disappears. Now Gordon’s son, Derek, has come to Ghana in search of his father, hiring Emma’s detective firm to investigate.

I enjoyed this mystery partly because it is set in Ghana, an interesting locale, and because of the different dialects and procedures. I also liked the characters, especially Emma, who is easy to cheer for. Internet scams are nothing new, of course, but the plot is fresh, multi-layered and quite interesting.

I will admit the pacing is slow, and the book does require a sharper focus and a little patience at times. But, I felt that the slower pace enabled me to fully absorb this well-crafted, detail driven story. Everything is somehow connected, and as the pieces drop into place in their own good time, it becomes clear how brilliantly plotted the novel is.

Overall, I loved the atmosphere, the lush, rich, and complicated location, the different dialects and the culture which helped create a tense, riveting crime drama. I already have the second book in the series queued up and ready to go!!

4 stars ( )

Missing in Ghana
Review of the Soho Crime paperback edition (Dec. 2020) of the original Soho Crime hardcover (Jan. 2020)

This is the first of Ghanaian-American Kwei Quartey's novels that I have read and it was therefore especially fascinating for the view of life and crime in Ghana (the West African country formerly known as the Gold Coast) that it presented. It does require that you suspend belief in some areas that scams of internet fraud can be so successful that a group such as the Sakawa Boys of Ghana can be profitable. There is already a film documentary that attests to that as well in Sakawa (2018). That the group is associated with sacrificial ritual cults and priests makes it all the more incredible.

Quartey builds his story very effectively and takes time with character development. The story toggles between the stories of soon-to-be missing American, named Gordon Tilson of the title and the private investigator Emma Djan, who is assigned to his case. Widower Tilson goes to Ghana to hopefully meet the woman he has been corresponding with online (a scam enabled through deep-fake videos). Discovering he has been duped, he sets out to expose the scammers, but then disappears. His son arrives in Ghana to search for him and not getting much help from the police, hires the private agency instead.

I found The Missing American to be quite an intriguing thriller in a unique setting. Investigator Emma Djan returns in "Sleep Well, My Lady" (Jan. 2021).

i read The Missing American due to its nomination for Best Novel in the 2021 Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America. The 75th Annual Edgar® Awards will be celebrated on April 29, 2021. ( )

A lonely widower is befriended on Facebook by a younger Ghanaian woman. They become close and he sends her money for her sister. His best friend, a dying journalist encourages him and he decides to visit her in Ghana. When he arrived, she is nowhere to be found. His friend convinces him to investigate sakawa boys, those who create false identities in order to scam money from unwitting westerners. The man disappears.

Emma joined the police force hoping to investigate murders, but the opportunity to join the homicide department came with sexual assault attempt from her boss and so she ends up working as a private investigator for a company in Accra and one of the first cases she is assigned is that of an American trying to find his father, who disappeared a few weeks earlier.

This is a solid mystery novel. The plot is solid and the novel is well-paced. The author is both Ghanaian and American and so this book is an introduction to life in Ghana, presented with an eye to what Americans don't know. Some of the characters and situations were what one expects in a thriller-type book but the uniqueness and richness of the setting minimized these elements and as this is the author's first book, there's a good chance this series will become better as it goes. ( )

If your urge to travel has been dampened by carbon-footprint guilt, the length of airport security lines, or straightened circumstances, you are at least able to travel to nearly any corner of the world via crime fiction. Consider taking a trip to Ghana, where Kwei Quartey has been introducing readers to the modern West African nation through an excellent police procedural series featuring detective Darko Dawson. In the first entry in a new series, Emma Djan takes over and provides the tour to a teaming, troubled, and fascinating country where cybercrime and traditional beliefs combine in a combustible mix.

Emma wants to follow in her father's footsteps to be a detective in the Accra police force, but when she resists a superior's sexual demands she finds herself in desperate need of a new career path. Fortunately, a more ethical private investigator takes her on, and soon she has a puzzling case on her hands. An American who had developed a close relationship with a Ghanaian woman over the internet decided to travel to Africa to surprise her. Then he vanished, and his son fears he was the victim of a crime. Emma is familiar with sakawa scams – a sophisticated descendent of the infamous Nigerian Prince email schemes. Using Skype, AI-enhanced video images, and cunning, gullible foreigners are seduced and gradually conned into sending money to their virtual paramours. Emma knows these scammers are organized by powerful fetish priests who promise wealth in exchange for obedience and a portion of the proceeds. What she doesn't know is that her hapless half-brother Bruno has been introduced by a friend to the profitable business.

Readers follow two paths and timeframes. One is the American's online infatuation leading him to Accra and, eventually, to disillusionment and danger. His story is capably woven into the investigation Emma conducts on behalf of the missing man's son. Along the way we armchair travelers get a fascinating tour of a country that as familiar as a Skype session yet intriguingly foreign. One may hope Darko Dawson will return, but meanwhile Emma Djan is an appealing, intrepid, and intelligent guide to the seamier side of a complicated country.

Reposted from Reviewing the Evidence.

I have been a fan of Kwei Quartey's Darko Dawson series since the first book, Wife of the Gods. I was thrilled to discover that The Missing American has the same superb sense of place as Quartey's previous series. Readers can feel as though they're actually in Ghana while they read; the landscape, weather, people, food, and culture give the story a richness that I find irresistible.

Although I loved reading this book, I did find it a bit bloated with a lot of "irons in the fire." Internet scams, sexual harassment, an assassin on the loose, corrupt police and government officials, a center for autistic children, murder, and missing persons just to mention a few. It's a lot to keep track of, and some of that action undoubtedly could have waited for upcoming books in the series.

The characters in The Missing American are an interesting mix. I couldn't really drum up a lot of sympathy for the missing American, which probably sounds a bit harsh, but I certainly do like Emma Djan, whose character is a good blend of intelligence, frailty, and strength. I also want to know more about her boss in the agency, Yemo Sowah. He's a fascinating man surrounded by a bit of mystery-- just the sort of character to pique my curiosity.

Now that Kwei Quartey's new Emma Djan series has well and truly begun, I find myself looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to my next visit to Ghana. ( )

The Missing American is Gordon Tillson who met the love of his life while working in Ghana in the Peace Corps. When his beloved wife dies of cancer, he mourns her for years and becomes a fixture in a Facebook group for the bereaved. He has a type, a Ghanaian woman connects with him on Facebook and he begins to fall for her. He also has a one-night tryst with a Ghanaian woman who is in D.C. for a fundraiser, the wife the head of the national police force. When his son, Dexter, confronts him about his internet romance whom he has sent a few thousand, he travels to Ghana to meet her and prove his son wrong.

Emma Djan is an ambitious young woman eager to follow in her father’s footsteps in the police – as a homicide detective. However, she soon runs into the old boy’s network and becomes a private detective, one who Gordon’s son Dexter hires to find his father who has gone missing. This takes her into investigating the infamous 419 scams which leads to investigating the corrupt police who help keep the scams going.

The Missing American is rich in plot. There are conspiracies on top of conspiracies with political assassinations, fraud, murder and corruption. I guess there is so much plot there was little room for the rest of what makes a great mystery, developing characters and establislhing a sense of place. It’s not that setting is completely absent, but it is not well-developed. There is a difficult balance on character development. Too much and the plot is weakend. Too little and we don’t care about the people. I would like to have seen more character development, but believe it may come in subsequent books in the series.

The Missing American will be published on January 14th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through Edelweiss

The Missing American at Soho Press
Kwei Quartey author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2020/01/02/9781641290708/ ( )

3.5 stars. ( )