Review: The Missing American

The Missing American by Kwei Quartey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Emma Djan is a young police officer in the Commercial Crimes Unit who was looking to shift to the Homicide Unit in Accra's Ghanaian police department when a fateful encounter with police commissioner Andoh derails her career, leaving her deeply shaken. After a few months of working part-time in the Apple store, a referral from a friend of her deceased father bears fruit. She is hired as the first female private investigator at a PI firm started by Yemo Sowah, a police officer who left the force a while back. Meanwhile, Emma's stepbrother Bruno seems to have fallen in with the wrong crowd, namely with Nii, who is running a fairly sophisticated sakawa operation- internet fraud backed by purported supernatural powers. Taking advantage of vulnerable individuals on social media, Nii tricks people like American widower Gordon Tilson into thinking that he has developed an online friendship/romantic relationship with a beautiful lady like Helena. After weeks of grooming him, disaster befalls Helena's sister and it's only natural that Gordon wants to help his friend with her sister's healthcare costs. Only when Gordon decides to travel to Ghana, the home country of his deceased wife, he finds many changes and no Helena. Recklessly, his journalist friend Cas pushes Gordon to pursue justice in order to further Cas's journalistic interest in reporting about Africa-based internet fraud schemes. Gordon's wrecking ball approach to investigating who defrauded him and how it was accomplished is the very height of indiscretion and could cost him dearly. When he goes missing, his worried son Derek travels to Ghana and, after growing dissatisfied with a formal police investigation into his father's disappearance, hires Sowah's firm to investigate his father's disappearance. Their investigation will solve more than just the mystery of the missing American. It will reveal complex corruption schemes, and possibly even the perpetrator of recent political assassinations.

Quartey's novel is full of rich and complex characters and the story itself was rather fascinating in terms of how internet scammers can, with simple equipment, create a very convincing fake identity, including interactive video imagery. I loved the character of Emma and her relationship with her stepbrother Bruno, who tested her loyalties. This was a satisfying start to a detective series and I'll be looking forward to future installments.

I listened to the splendid audiobook, narrated by Robin Miles, one of my all-time favorite narrators. Her pitch-perfect inflections of various Ghanaian accents made me reminisce fondly about a grad school friend who was from Accra.

Yes, please. More!
I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

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