Book Review: Murder at Cape Three Points

Murder at Cape Three PointsBy Kwei QuarteySoho Crime, 2014The beautiful, boiling-hot African nation of Ghana is the setting for Kwei Quartey’s latest murder mystery starring Inspector Darko Dawson, stationed in the capital city of Accra, and it further underscores one of the nicest side-pleasures of the mystery genre, its happy ability to transport its readers to the nitty-gritty of all kinds of exotic locations. The majority of Quartey’s readers will perhaps not have visited Ghana’s picturesque beaches, malarial swamps, and teeming, dust-choked cities, but those readers will get some of the flavor of the place from reading Murder at Cape Three Points - and readers who have visited Ghana and managed to escape again will find much to remind them of their time there.The problem with that particular aspect, that transportative aspect, is that writers can sometimes rely too heavily on it, as Quartey does in his latest novel. Murder at Cape Three Points doesn’t work particularly hard or dig particularly deep. It opens with a grisly sight at Cape Three Points on the coast of Ghana’s Western Region, whose capital is Sekondi-Takoradi. Off Cape Three Points are the oil extraction facilities of the British oil company Malgam, one of the sources of Ghana’s oil boom. One day at the rig site a canoe washes up containing the dead bodies of Charles and Fiona Smith-Aidoo – and Charles, a director of corporate affairs at Malgam, had been decapitated.The Takoradi police force make no progress in solving the case, and finally the Smith-Aidoo’s niece, a strong-willed young doctor named Sapphire, petitions the Homicide Unit of Accra’s Criminal Investigations Department to step in and find some justice for her uncle and his wife. Chief Superintendent Lartey interrupts Dawson’s leave to send him to Takoradi (accompanied by Lartey’s nephew Detective Sergeant Chikata, an impulsive, intuitive, and altogether more interesting character than Dawson himself) and sift through the available clues.Dawson has the requisite odd distinguishing feature central detective figures have sported since before the days of Sherlock Holmes. In Dawson’s case, he’s prone to synesthesia, “in which the stimulation of one of the senses leads to an automatic experience in another sense.” Unfortunately, the slightly lackluster tone of the rest of the novel affects even this promising fictional gambit, as we’re told:

He could never predict what would set it off – a voice as rough as sandpaper or as sweet as a musical instrument. Sometimes it acted as a lie detector when a change in vocal tone set off his synethesia, but it wasn’t infallible. Good liars could sneak past Dawson.

As Dawson begins poking around in the tightly-knit community of Takoradi, he immediately begins to suspect he’s surrounded by good liars. His touchstone in town is his cousin Abraham, whose personal connections included the two murder victims:It didn’t surprise Dawson that cousin Abraham had had contact with two murder victims. Takoradi was a relatively small city, and personal connections, whether direct or indirect, often went back as far as primary school. Ghanaians made it a point to mix with others in their socioeconomic group and to “know” people and talk about them. Phone numbers were exchanged and shared at the drop of a hat, and arriving at a party with uninvited friends and relatives was quite the norm.You can get some hint of the dutiful grind of the novel from that “socioeconomic group,” and alas, it runs throughout Murder at Cape Three Points. Quartey’s narrative gifts don’t extend either to pacing or to dialogue, and far too many of his scenes simply plod along, like this one:

Dawson thanked the matron and followed Dr. Smith-Aidoo to a private room not in use. It was comfortably air conditioned. Two chairs were available next to a neatly made-up bed. They sad down facing each other. She crossed one elegant leg over the other. He could not help staring at her hazel eyes. They were clear and bright, but he could see a certain sadness hanging within them like clouds marring the sun.

The plot does complicate; Charles Smith-Aidoo’s first cousin Jason Sarbah, for instance, seems to have a grudge against Sapphire for failing (in his view) to do enough to save his young daughter, who dies of a rare medical condition. And since Sarbah becomes Charles’s replacement as director of Malgam corporate affairs, he and his associates present Dawson and Chikata with plenty of material for detection. It’ll be left to Quartey’s readers to be a bit frustrated that neither one of them is much of a detective. But at least those readers will get plenty of atmosphere while they’re turning pages.