Murder is only the tip of a ferociously toxic iceberg.
Quartey’s most personal crime novel asks Emma Djan and her colleagues at the Sowah detective agency to figure out who’s running through Accra’s LGBTQ+ community silencing its loudest voices.
Even before he’s killed, Marcelo Tetteh has already paid a high price for his activism. When he speaks out at a rally of the right-wing International Congress of Families, he’s grabbed by security officers, and his community is targeted by an aggressive new series of anti-gay laws backed by ICF leader Christopher Cortland; Peter Ansah, the minister of tourism, arts, and culture; and their allies in the ultraconservative religious and government communities. So it’s shocking but not entirely surprising when he’s hacked to death by what forensic evidence indicates are two assailants. Godfrey Tetteh, his grieving father, wants the Sowah Agency to identify his killers, who may also have executed Marcelo’s co-worker and friend Abraham Quao. So Yemo Sowah, the agency’s founder and owner, sends Emma and Jojo Ayitey undercover to infiltrate the ICF. Jojo backs out because he’s a closeted gay man who doesn’t want his identity to compromise the investigation, or vice versa. But his reticence doesn’t protect him from getting arrested for the murder of famous transgender singer Henrietta Blay, who’s killed before she can talk to Emma. It’s hard to tell whether the murders are the work of a single mastermind or a wave of vigilantes because the public stance throughout Ghana is so horrendously anti-LGBTQ+. Even though the persecutors’ obvious hypocrisy makes them all look guilty, Quartey manages to produce a culprit who’ll surprise most readers.
Murder is only the tip of a ferociously toxic iceberg.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781641295888
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.
Lt. Eve Dallas’ 63rd futuristic case is less a whodunit than a manhunt for an unusually sympathetic killer.
Thirteen years ago, way back in 2048, scientific genius Steve Redman—father of the Banner-Wyst corporation’s Rainmaker Project—narrowly escaped death in a gas explosion that killed his pregnant wife and infant son and 200 other residents of their New York City apartment building the night before he planned to report his suspicions about the company to the FBI. Now the bill is coming due for Banner-Wyst. The first death to be discovered is that of Lawrence Chu, Redman’s colleague and trusted friend, whose tenure as director of bioengineering science ends when he’s beaten to death. For quite a while, Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, know less about this mystery than their readers do. But when Ezra Dent, a consultant to Banner-Wyst who worked with Redman and Chu back in the day, is murdered in exactly the same ferocious way, Dallas and Peabody, with help from Roarke, Dallas’ tech-billionaire husband, promptly put the pieces together and determine who they’re looking for. The search for Redman, who went AWOL from his hospital bed without a trace six years ago, has its own challenges. So does Dallas’ attempt to get cooperation from partners Calvin Banner and Jacob Wyst, who are clearly in the crosshairs of a killer who seems a lot less monstrous than they are. If the breaks in the case are suspiciously convenient in arriving, readers can pride themselves on taking sides against a mega-corporation whose self-avowed ecological saintliness is undermined by its leaders’ underhanded dealing.
A satisfying thriller that will warm the hearts of fans who already take comfort in hating the forces of evil.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414564
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.
It takes a quirky sleuth to solve a baffling closed-door murder.
The author himself or, more accurately, some version of him, walks the reader through a “gruesome murder” that occurred in a rural farming village. At the center of the crime is the wealthy Ichiyanagi family, including the widow Itoko and her five children. The “heinous crime” occurs in the evening after the festive wedding of eldest son Kenzo to schoolteacher Katsuko. Yokomizo, part narrator and part raconteur, liberally shares digressions such as the fact that his favorite British author is A.A. Milne, who wrote The Red House Mystery as well as the books about Winnie-the-Pooh. Written in 1946 but set in 1937 before the devastation of World War II, this is the first novel featuring Kosuke Kindaichi, the legendary detective who appeared in more than 70 stories by Yokomizo. If Yokomizo is the Japanese Agatha Christie, Kindaichi may seem the Japanese Hercule Poirot—although actually, given his unkempt hair and apparently distracted manner, he’s more a cross between Poirot and Columbo. Shrewdly, his entrance is delayed until midway through the novel, after the police have stalled and both the family and the reader are anxious for a solution. The narrator’s garrulous charm, in a mystery long on logistics and forensic clues but short on detailed character portraits or extended interactions, is a key to the novel’s success, leavening the more intricate pieces of the puzzle. Armchair detectives will welcome the helpful character list that precedes the story.
The delightful debut of a classic, prolific detective.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781805336549
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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