Kwei Quartey continues his PI Emma Djan series (The Missing American) in Sleep Well, My Lady, an intriguing mystery that centers on the murder of a famous Ghanaian designer. Lady Araba, the mogul of her own fashion label, has had a tumultuous on-and-off affair with talk show host Augustus Seeza for several years. When her body is found in her bed the day before an important runway show, many people are immediately suspicious that Augustus, an alcoholic, was involved.
But Augustus has influential parents--a doctor and a judge--and when Lady Araba's driver signed a confession under duress, the largely ineffective Ghanaian police were content to let the driver go to prison, without ever testing the evidence from the scene for DNA.
A year after Araba's death, her aunt Dele comes to the private detective agency where Emma Djan works, seeking the truth about Araba's death. Dele is sure that the driver, who loyally served Araba for years, could not have been involved. As Emma and the other investigators at the agency start digging, they discover that nothing in Araba's life was as glamorous as it seemed. Araba had been hiding a dark secret since her childhood, and competitors in the cutthroat fashion industry could also have wanted her dead.
Vividly invoking the noisy world of Accra, Ghana, Quartey has created a delightful character in Emma Djan, and a satisfyingly twisty mystery in Sleep Well, My Lady. Fans of Andrea Camilleri or Colin Cotterill are sure to enjoy Quartey's talented writing. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.