Episode 14: Kwei Quartey

Destination Mystery

I have been a fan of this series, set in Ghana, since the first book, Wife of the Gods. Dr. Kwei Quartey writes with warmth and compassion and ruthless honesty about the struggles of his hero, Inspector Darko Dawson, a good man in a difficult and often corrupt system. In the interview, Kwei seems taken aback by my comparison to Raymond Chandler, but I stand by it: the mean streets may be in Ghana rather than Los Angeles, but the themes of justice and entrenched corruption are universal. Each of the novels takes on a major issue as the backdrop to personal stories of murder and betrayal. You don't have to read them in order, but if you'd like to, here you go: 1 - Wife of the Gods 2 - Children of the Street 3 - Murder at Cape Three Points 4 - Gold of Our Fathers Kwei has also written a novella outside of the series: Death at the Voyager Hotel, which features a woman amateur sleuth who is not content to let a hotel drowning be swept aside as a tragic accident. As always, if you'd prefer to read the interview rather than listen, here is the transcript. Enjoy! Transcript of Interview with Kwei Quartey Laura Brennan: My guest today manages to juggle two careers, as both a crime writer and a practicing physician. Doctor Kwei Quartey writes the Inspector Darko Dawson mystery series, set in Ghana. The fourth book in the series, Gold of Our Fathers, takes Inspector Dawson into the world of illegal gold mining and the corruption that grows along with the promise of wealth. Kwei, thank you for joining me. Kwei Quartey: Thank you for inviting me, Laura. LB: Wife of the Gods is your first novel, and it's just a tour de force. KQ: Thank you. LB: Let's start by assuming that someone is listening who doesn't know anything about your series. What's the basic thing they need to know going in? KQ: The series that I call the Chief Inspector Darko Dawson series, all set in Ghana, at least so far. And the protagonist Darko Dawson is an inspector in the Criminal Investigations Department in Accra. That's the headquarters, but he is sent to other parts of the country, which is in fact what happens with Ghana police service officers, they get sent to various parts of the country. Darko himself is a good father and husband, he's got two children and a wife who sometimes gives him insight into the mysteries he's solving. He's a bit of a rebel in the office, though. A little belligerent to his superiors and sometimes breaking the rules if he feels that the rules are silly or they need to be broken if he's going to solve his mystery. LB: Now, you have also mentioned that -- because you are a doctor -- that being a doctor is a little like being a detective. KQ: The parallels are remarkable, actually. I once saw a couple in my practice and the woman, the wife in the couple, came in with a litany of complaints which were all disconnected, from headaches to a pain in her side, to joint pain. All sorts of disparate complaints. The husband, who came in but was quiet, I noticed was studying her very hard, and some of these things were tip-offs to me that there was a lot more going on beneath the surface. It only took one question for me to ask, one question for me in which I asked how were things going on at home, and that had the wife burst out crying. And then it turned out that the husband had been unfaithful and they were trying to get things back together again. But it was proving so stressful that the wife was showing all these different types of symptoms. And the lesson behind this story is that sometimes there's much more beneath the surface or much more under your nose than -- that you might not realize. And that applies to both the detective and the doctor. It's up to both the doctor and the detective to look for clues all the time, to steer you in the right direction. Say I had followed strictly on this person's symptoms. Okay, she had severe headaches, so I would be, say,