Quarty, Kwei. Wife of the Gods. Narrated by Simon Prebble. Trantor Media, 2010.
Quarty, Kwei. Wife of the Gods. Random House, 2009.
Reason read: in the month of March Ghana obtained sovereignty.
Who would want to murder Gladys, a young woman studying to be a doctor. She volunteered at an HIV clinic battling the wide-spreading threat of AIDS across Ghana. She seemed to be a very sweet girl with a bright future ahead of her and yet she wound up strangled to death and hidden in a grove of trees. Darko Dawson has been assigned the case even though it is out of his jurisdiction. Because he has family ties to this remote village, Darko potentially could navigate the cultural conflict between witchcraft versus modern science.
Like any good murder mystery there is that one suspect who looks so good for the crime that you think how could it NOT be him? Everything points to Samuel, a man obsessed with Gladys. Witnesses saw him talking (harassing?) her right where she was murdered. He couldn’t account for his whereabouts before or after the crime…even Darko’s aunt swears the boy was seen talking to Gladys.
[As an aside: The definition of a wife of the gods is a woman who has committed a crime serving penitence with fetish priests. This woman is forced to have sex with the priests to “pay” for her crime.]
Confessional: I thought the ending of this book was perfect. It was very satisfying, akin to putting the last pieces of a puzzle into place. I enjoyed getting to know Darko Dawson and wished I had more Quarty books on my Challenge list to see what Darko did next.
This was a book I enjoyed on audio narrated by Simon Prebble.
Author fact: Quarty is a crime writer and a physician. Wife of the Gods is Quarty’s first novel.
Book trivia: Wife of the Gods is the first book in the Darko Dawson series. It is the only book I am reading by Quarty for the Challenge series.
Music: “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Africa: the Greenest Continent” (p 7).
~*LunaSea*~ 