Kwei Quartey will be releasing the third installment in the Emma Djan Investigation series in February 2023. Titled Last Seen in Lapaz, the crime novel will be published by Soho Crime and will explore private investigator Emma Djan’s dangerous undercover pursuits as she tries to track down a missing woman and a murderer on the loose in Accra, Ghana.

The main plot of the novel involves a whirlwind romance leading to a brutal murder and the disappearance of a young Nigerian woman. An old friend of PI Djan’s boss contacts Djan to ask for help locating his missing, love-struck daughter. According to the father, “Ngozi had a bright future ahead of her when she became secretive and withdrawn,…all she wanted to do was be with her handsome new beau, Femi, instead of attending law school in the fall.”

When Ngozi disappears from her parents’ house in Nigeria in the middle of the night, they immediately suspect the lover Femi and decide to contact Djan. Read the full book description below:

During Emma’s first week on the case, Femi is found murdered at his opulent residence in Accra. There are no signs of Ngozi at the scene, and fearing the worst, Emma digs further, discovering that Femi was part of a network of sex traffickers across West Africa. Emma must figure out which of Femi’s many enemies killed him, but more urgently, she must find Ngozi before she, too, is murdered in cold blood.

Kwei Quartey is a renowned Ghanaian-American crime fiction writer. He has written many novels including Death at the Voyager Hotel (2014), The Missing American (2020), Sleep Well, My Lady (2021), the Inspector Darko Dawson series, and the Emma Djan series. The debut novel in the Inspector Darko Dawson series Wife of the Gods (2009) made the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. The Missing American was shortlisted for the 2020 Edgar Allan Poe Award, while Sleep Well, My Lady won the 2021 Shamus Award. Congrats to Quartey on the new murder mystery!

Last Seen in Lapaz will be out February 7, 2023. Preorder here.