Kwei Quartey Tackles Ghana’s Anti-Gay Bill in Emma Djan Finale

Ghanaian-American writer Kwei Quartey will be releasing the fourth and final installment in the Emma Djan Investigation series on September 3. Titled The Whitewashed Tombs and published by Soho Crime, the crime novel explores the consequences of an anti-gay bill in Ghana and vicious hate crimes that rock the LGBTQ+ community in Accra.

The previous books in the Emma Djan Investigation series include The Missing American (2020), Sleep Well, My Lady (2021), and Last Seen in Lapaz (2023). Accra private investigator Emma Djan works for a private detective agency that takes on cases of missing persons, theft, and infidelity. And she’s definitely good at her job, even when prejudice against LGBTQ+ people and political laws threaten to stymie Djan’s investigation.

The Whitewashed Tombs features 27-year-old LGBTQ activist Marcelo Tetteh, who is butchered one night after being lured on Grindr to a deserted building site. With rampant homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer, so he goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out.

Emma is assigned the case, but quickly learns of a complication that prevents her from teaming up with her trusted colleague Jojo. It turns out that Jojo was dating the victim Marcelo. Working with an unpleasant colleague Manu, Emma goes undercover in the International Congress of Families, a powerful organization seeking to criminalize homosexuality in African countries.

As Emma infiltrates the ICF, she uncovers a web of deceit and hypocrisy and discovers that the mastermind behind the murders is someone much closer than she ever imagined. Emma must race against time to unmask the killer, protect the vulnerable LGBTQ+ community, and bring justice to the victims, all while navigating the dangerous waters of politics, power, and personal secrets.

Quartey is a star for tackling the subject of this real-life anti-gay bill that is currently putting LGBTQ+ people in Ghana at risk. We hope that shedding light on this topic through literature creates political change as well!

Kwei Quartey is a renowned Ghanaian-American crime fiction writer. He has written many novels including Death at the Voyager Hotel (2014), 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.