"Wife of the Gods"

Kwei Quartey was raised in Ghana by an African American mother and a Ghanaian father, both of whom were university lecturers. He practices medicine in Southern California, rising early in the morning to write before going to work.

He applied the “Page 69 Test” to Wife of the Gods, his debut novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 marks an important part of the novel, Wife of the Gods. A young, beautiful and promising medical student, Gladys Mensah, has been found strangled in Ketanu, a rural town in Ghana’s gorgeous Volta Region. Inspector Darko Dawson is dispatched to Ketanu from the Criminal Investigations Department of the sprawling capital city of Accra to help solve the case, since the authorities don’t trust the local police to do the job.

This page shows the first signs of the tension that will very shortly begin to build up to an explosion between Darko and Ketanu’s police chief, Inspector Max Fiti, who resents Darko’s presence. It is only one of the conflicts Darko will have in this town. Aspects of local culture do not sit well with him, including the widespread belief that witchcraft is responsible for Gladys’s murder, and the traditional practice of indenturing young girls to fetish priests in order to atone for a crime committed by a family member.

But something else troubles Darko about Ketanu. It is the last place that his dear mother was seen alive 25 years ago. The baffling and unsolved disappearance has haunted him to this day. Will his return to Ketanu help resolve this void in his life, or will it only make it worse?

Read an excerpt from Wife of the Gods, and learn more about the book and author at Kwei Quartey's website and blog.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue