Review | Sleep Well My Lady | Kwei Quartey

We’re delighted to be sharing Elena’s thoughts about Sleep Well My Lady by Kewi Quartey on the Allison & Busby tour.

Fashion designer Lady Araba is found dead in her bed at the beginning of Accra fashion week and no-one is above suspicion. It’s 10 months after the brutal murder, and her driver Kweku-Sam is in prison after being charged with the crime, apparently with a signed confession. However, as we go deeper into the story, we begin to see that there are a few people who would wish her dead, and Araba’s aunt Dele enlists the help of Emma who works at a private investigator firm to catch the culprit, such is her belief that Kweku-Sam is innocent. 

There is a long list of suspects, including Araba’s father Reverend Tagoe, her lover Augustus Seeza (a one-time famous tv interviewer who happens to also be married) her ex-business partner who has set up a competing fashion label and her gardener, who used to like to spy on her through her window such was his obsession. Each person has a reason for murdering Araba and it’s up to Emma and her colleagues to find out what really happened and help justice prevail.

I absolutely adored this murder mystery and fell in love with the depictions of Ghana and descriptions of its people, culture and food. I felt as though I was in Ghana myself! 

I didn’t guess who the murderer was, although I had suspicions about every single character! The author has done a fantastic job of keeping you guessing until the last minute and just when you think you’ve cracked it he throws in a curveball. I was eager for the killer to get his or her comeuppance and I felt deeply sorry for Araba who had been let down by everyone she cared about. Some of what she has had to live through is awful. 

Sleep Well My Lady is a wonderful novel that will keep you guessing till the very last minute. 

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Based in Pasadena, California, Kwei Jones Quartey, M.D. is a writer of African crime fiction. He practiced medicine for more than 20 years while simultaneously working as a writer, balancing the two careers by writing early mornings before clinic. However, in 2018, he made the decision to retire from medicine to write full time.

WIFE OF THE GODS, the acclaimed debut in his Inspector Darko Dawson series, was on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List in 2009. A year later, G.O.G. National Book Club awarded him the title of Best Male Author.

In 2020, the Emma Djan Investigations series debuted with the highly praised THE MISSING AMERICAN, followed by the sequel, SLEEP WELL, MY LADY.

In a starred review, Jane Murphy of Publishers Weekly says, ” . . . Quartey, also the author of the Darko Dawson series, is one of the strong voices in the current wave of African crime fiction, which provides relevant insight into a continent anxious to maintain its unique identity yet thrive in the twenty-first-century world.” 

​The son of a Black American mother and Ghanaian father, Dr. Quartey is a Ghanaian-American writer who grew up in both Ghana and the United States. His passion is to promote African American writers, African literature, African bestseller fiction, and African mystery writers.

Dr. Quartey feels that African mysteries (sometimes called “Sunshine Noir”) deserve a seat at the table of international thrillers and mysteries. His novels are the only contemporary West African mystery series issued by major international publishers such as Penguin-Random House and Soho Press in the United States, and Allison & Busby in the United Kingdom. Facebook

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