The Missing American by Kwei Quartey

Following the success of his Darko Dawson mysteries, author Kwei Quartey has created a new detective in Emma Djwa. This novel deals with urgent contemporary issues raised by fellow novelists including Tana French, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Alexander McCall Smith.

In modern Accra, as in so many other places both real and fictional, police struggle with international cybercrime as digital technology challenges them as much as it helps their work. As long as cash is king, international business gets away with piratical behaviour. When companies like Apple refuse to cooperate with forces of law and order, governments have no effective sanctions.

As well as demonstrating how the dominant capitalist mindset has corrupted the integrity of public and social institutions, Quartey portrays sexual inequality and socially sanctioned bullying on the part of men in high positions.

He also raises the chilling spectre of witchcraft. Coincidentally, while reading Quartey, I came across a talk on witchcraft in the modern world. Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol says it is alive and well, even growing, even though this “challenges so many of our assumptions.” In spite of the fact that “to most of the western world it doesn’t exist,” for people elsewhere, it can be “a serious problem,” a “horribly dramatically real,” force in their lives when “traditional priests” hold them in thrall with supernatural threats and earthly promises. Alexander McCall Smith has also portrayed the problem of witchcraft in a couple of his Mma Ramotswe novels.

In this story, vast sums of money from online romance scams funnels upwards from vulnerable young men who are lured into the one-way street of working for a “traditional priest” who continues to uses alternating threats and blandishments to keep the money coming. This novel is a well-constructed and entertaining mystery. At the same time, it’s an eye-opener that brings readers face to face with the long shadow of history and its consequent social problems, including some we may be only vaguely aware of.