Last Seen in Lapaz
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Publisher Description
When a whirlwind romance leads to a brutal murder and the disappearance of a young Nigerian woman, PI Emma Djan resorts to dangerous undercover work to track her down in Accra.
Just as things at work are slowing down for PI Emma Djan, an old friend of her boss’s asks for help locating his missing daughter in Accra. According to her father, Ngozi had a bright future ahead of her when she became secretive and withdrawn. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was be with her handsome new beau, Femi, instead of attending law school in the fall. So when she disappears from her parents’ house in Nigeria in the middle of the night, they immediately suspect Femi was behind it and have reason to believe the pair has fled to Ghana.
The case escalates quickly when Femi is found murdered at an opulent hotel in Accra, but there are no signs of Ngozi at the scene. Emma knows if she’s to have any hope of finding Ngozi, she must learn more about Femi, so she digs into his past and discovers he was part of a network of sex traffickers operating across West Africa. Fearing the worst, Emma resorts to dangerous undercover work in a desperate attempt to track Ngozi down before it’s too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Quartey's intriguing third Emma Djan investigation (after 2021's Sleep Well, My Lady) finds the Ghanaian PI, an operative for the Sowah Private Investigators Agency, leading the search for Ngozi Ojukwu, a prominent diplomat's 18-year-old daughter, who was about to start law school and disappeared from her parents' house in Lagos, Nigeria, months earlier under suspicious circumstances. Ngozi's parents believe she ran off with 28-year-old Femi Adebanjo, the Ghanaian Nigerian manager of a hotel and high-class brothel in Accra. The stakes rise when Femi turns up murdered in his upscale home with Ngozi nowhere to be found. It turns out Femi was engaged in human trafficking, and Emma subsequently goes undercover as a sex worker to get a lead on Ngozi's fate. The somewhat leisurely paced investigation builds to a satisfactory resolution. Well-defined characters complement the clever narrative structure, and dialogue in West African pidgin dialect (for which a glossary is provided) adds realism. Not just those looking for a detailed picture of modern West African life, the book's main strength, will be rewarded.
