The Voyager Hotel in Accra is located in the busy central Tudu district. It’s a hub of trade and business, and also where hundreds of homeless adults and children sleep along the sidewalks at night.

Tudu Road in Accra

Early on a March morning in 2013, a young American woman called Heather Peterson was found dead in the Voyager Hotel swimming pool. Heather, from Portland, Oregon, had worked as a volunteer teachers’ assistant at an urban school in Accra called High Street Academy, which catered to needy, eight- to fifteen-year-old children, particularly from the nearby neighborhood of Jamestown.

The lighthouse at Jamestown

Deemed an accident, the drowning death was declared an accident due to swimming while intoxicated, as indicated by Heather’s high postmortem blood alcohol levels. But this conclusion raised many questions. Heather had been an expert swimming instructor. How could she have drowned in six feet of water?  Why would she have gotten so drunk when she had indulged in alcohol very little and no one had ever seen her inebriated. What really happened to Heather?

That’s the background to my upcoming e-novella, Death at the Voyager Hotel. It’s fiction, but the story that triggered it is real. Last year, I stumbled upon the mysterious and haunting case of Phylicia Moore.

In April 2007, Phylicia was an eighteen-year-old honor student at Teaneck High School, NJ, who planned to attend the Columbia School of Journalism. She had saved up for a two-week class trip to Ghana, the purpose of which was to take school supplies to Ghanaian schoolchildren and an AIDS orphanage. The excursion chaperones’  words of reassurance to Phylicia’s parents Lola and Douglas Moore before the trip, “Don’t worry — we’ll take good care of her,” were to prove fateful, because Phylicia would never return home alive. In fact, after arrival in Accra with her schoolmates, she had less than twenty-four hours to live.

The Circumstances                                                                                                                                     The school group checked into the First Choice Lodge, which appears on the Internet to be a decent-enough hotel. Typical of teenagers, the students wasted no time getting to the pool to horse around and have fun. Phylicia was at poolside, and according to one version of the story, around 10:30 p.m. she told the chaperones that she was going to her room to change into her swimsuit. About eleven hours later, she was found dead at the bottom of the pool clad in her bathing costume underneath a tank top and shorts, but without her shoes. What had happened to her during that interval was a mystery that could flummox the very best of detectives in fiction or real life.

Presumably, when Phylicia went to her room to change into her bathing suit, she had intended to return immediately to the pool to join her friends. It was reported that at least some of her schoolmates were up until the wee hours of the morning while the chaperones went to bed. How is it that no one – neither the students nor the chaperones – thought to check up on Phylicia when they realized she hadn’t returned? Even more dumfounding, by at the most 8 o’clock the following morning, how could no one have noticed Phylicia’s absence, and how is it possible she was not found in the pool before about 9:30? Didn’t the students and chaperones have events or excursions planned for the day? Didn’t they go down for breakfast, at which point someone would have asked, “Where’s Phylicia?” Not a single hotel guest or a pool-cleaner or other hotel personnel went by the pool during the course of the morning?  Hotels in Ghana are no different from others all over the world – they start the day early.

The Investigation

The crucial question is what took place between 10:30 that night and eleven hours later. The elephant in the room was expressed in a Youtube video by Douglas Moore, who asserts with the anguish of a father whose daughter has been snatched away: “…Someone put her in that pool and made it look like she drowned.” But an autopsy conducted in Ghana concluded that Phylicia had “accidentally drowned” and that no signs of foul play were present. In the video, the Moores’ attorney, Nancy Lucianna, states that another autopsy done after the Phylicia’s body was returned to the U.S. concluded that she had not been in the water long – certainly not as long as eight to ten hours and perhaps only one or two.

That doesn’t tell us enough, however. Even more important is whether swimming pool water was found in Phylicia’s lungs, an indication of drowning as the immediate cause of death. [Interestingly, the absence of water in the lungs of a drowned person does not always prove that death was not due to drowning (i.e. the body was dumped postmortem) because laryngospasm during submersion may prevent a lot of water entering the lungs.] Toxicology studies done in Ghana and repeated in the U.S. were negative, i.e., no suggestion that Phylicia ingested any significant alcohol or other drug. According to Nancy Lucianna, Ghanaian officials discarded Phylicia’s clothes, “because they didn’t think it was something that was important.” That’s another odd angle to the story.

In an effort aided by Rep. Steve Rothman, D-NJ, Lola and Douglas Moore tried to enlist the assistance of the FBI. Then U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Pamela E. Bridgewater let them know that Ron Nolan, FBI’s legal attache assigned to Lagos, Nigeria, would travel to Ghana to serve as a liaison to a task force formed by Ghanaian authorities to review Moore’s death. That is not the same as a formal FBI investigation. However, Nancy Lucianna said in the video, “we do know that the FBI has followed all the leads in Ghana to the present date, and they are focusing their attention on the Teaneck High School students…” What that meant exactly isn’t clear.

There were also accusations leveled that because Phylicia was black, much less attention was given to her case than to that of blond Natalee Holloway, for example. This has been called the “Missing White Woman Syndrome.”

The conclusions                                                                                                                              

The default assumption in drowning cases is that an accident has occurred. One reason could be that swimming is almost by definition associated with fun and recreation, not homicide or suicide, but as suggested in this ABC feature, 20 percent of supposedly accidental drownings might be homicides missed by law enforcement. Andrea Zafares, lead trainer for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Dive Recovery Team, emphasizes in interviews and written papers that a drowning case may not actually be the accident it may initially seem. This may have been the situation with Phylicia Moore, in that Ghanaian authorities presupposed that she had drowned by accident and did not pursue an exhaustive criminal investigation.

The denouement

Nancy Lucianna has informed me that the Phylicia Moore case has now been solved, but she could not provide me with the details without the Moores’ consent. Obviously, they may wish no further publicity on the matter, which is understandable. In Death at the Voyager Hotel, one woman, Paula Djan, was steadfast in her belief that Heather Peterson did not drown by accident, and she stuck to her guns until the true culprit was found. In the end, perhaps that’s what happened in the Phylicia Moore case. Someone persevered until the truth was uncovered. Whatever did happen to Lola and Douglas Moore’s  daughter, it’s a heart-wrenching story of a promising young woman whose life was abruptly and brutally cut too short and too soon.

In Ghana‘s cosmopolitan capital of Accra, the Voyager Hotel is widely known as a medium-priced, well-run lodging perfectly suited to cash-strapped tourists. But one early March morning, it gains a notoriety it would rather not have. Hotel guest Heather Peterson, a beautiful, young Oregonian teacher, is found dead at the bottom of the hotel’s pool.

Cover artwork by Ellie Searl*

The police authorities deem it an accidental drowning, but that raises troubling questions. Heather was a strong swimmer. How could she have drowned in six feet of water?

Paula Djan, principal of the urban school at which Heather was a volunteer, suspects foul play and begins to dig around. As she discovers an increasing number of suspects, she encounters hostility from police investigators, who take a dim view of her snooping. But much more than stepping on a few toes, Paula may be headed down a dangerous path where the killer lies in wait with every intention of making her the second victim at the Voyager.

As a novella, the story runs about 100 pages – good for a quick read on a plane flight or on a quiet evening at home. It is based loosely on a true story, which I’ll tell you about in my next blog.

*Ellie Searl

What do you….

your beloved smartphone….

   Ben Affleck, and….

the Democratic Republic of  the Congo

have to do with each other?

Maybe you used your iPhone to look up Argo, the Oscar-winning film directed by and starring Ben Affleck…

Beyond that, are you stuck? Read about the surprising connection here.

Publishers Marketplace – February 21, 2013 – Kwei Quartey’s MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS, a detective Darko mystery to Juliet Grames at Soho Press in a two book deal by agent Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (world English)

That’s the official announcement heralding my new publisher, Soho Press. The first of the two novels in the deal will be MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS. The editing process will begin shortly and publication is targeted for March 2014. Not to worry, it will be 2014 before you realize.

Soho Press, founded in 1986 and located in the heart of downtown Manhattan (actually not very far from where I lived in New York), is an independent publisher of literary fiction. One of its imprints is Soho Crime, which publishes beautifully produced, culturally rich crime novels in settings all over the world. Almost all of the books are serial novels set in particular countries and/or cultures. This is Soho Crime’s specialty, making it a very good home for the Darko Dawson series.

Soho Crime’s long list of authors includes Cara Black, a bestselling writer known for her female, Paris-based private investigator, Aimée Léduc. Colin Cotterill, who lives in Southeast Asia, writes the award-winning Dr. Siri mystery series set in Laos. In 2011, Soho Crime published the blockbuster The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, whose Nina Borg series is set in Denmark. Stuart Neville‘s The Ghosts of Belfast won him the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Henry Chang‘s Jack Yu mystery series is set in New York’s Chinatown, where Chang grew up.

It’s gratifying to now have Detective Darko contributing to the rich mix of murder mystery settings that makes Soho Crime so special.

Cardinal Peter Turkson (courtesy http://rejtelyekszigete.blogger.hu)

Well, the papacy must go on, so the question is, who’s next? Who will fill the vacancy? Several candidates are in the running, among them Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson. But this potential choice is already causing some controversy.

Read more…

Courtesy Florida Geographic Alliance

Modern-day Timbuktu is located in Mali. Rebels agitating for autonomy have triggered an insurgency in Mali. France’s military intervention on January 11, 2013 led to the present hostage siege in Algeria. Get the whole story in my latest post at FPIF.

The growth of ebooks has been phenomenal. As a percentage of the US wholesale trade market, sales grew from 0.25% in 2007 to approximately 20% in 2011 (See Mark Coker, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success.) As ebook revenues topped hardcover, ebook and traditional paper book fans have argued back and forth over which form is “better,” and whether the paper book will one day disappear forever. At the same time, indications are that ebook sales may have peaked and customers may have reached saturation.

Ebooks have been pitched as adversaries of print books, but rather than displace print books, they can supplement them. For example, consider the twelve- to eighteen-month interval between an author’s submission of his or her manuscript to the publishers, and the release of the printed book (either hardcover or paperback.) This a long time for many authors (especially those who write fast), and it seems like an eternity for his or her fans.

That’s where ebooks can come in. Like them or not, their production is much faster – hours to a few months – and in the interim between the hardcover releases, authors can write one or more ebooks to sate their readers’ hunger. Even blockbuster authors are doing this. For example, Kindle Singles, which are essays or short stories, feature Lee Child’s “Second Son” (forty pages), Michael Connelly’s “The Safe Man,” (forty-three pages), David Baldacci’s “No Time Left” (fifteen pages), and Stephen King’s “Mile 81,” (eighty pages.) In 2000, Stephen King stunned the publishing world when 400,000 copies of his e-novella “Riding the Bullet” sold within twenty four hours. Other email retailers and/or distributors are Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Page Foundry, and Diesel eBookstore.

Ebooks have been around for at least forty years and, debatably, even longer. In 1971, American author Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg, a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to “encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks,” and his very first ebook was the United States Declaration of Independence. Today, Project Gutenberg has digitized over 33,000 books.

One of the first dedicated ebook readers was the Rocket Ebook, introduced to the market in 1998. In 2007, the year Apple released the first generation iPhone, Amazon launched the Kindle ebook reader. In the next few years, a large number of readers was introduced, including the Barnes & Noble Nook. The Kindle in its various incarnations remains the most popular dedicated ebook reader, although sales have recently dropped with the advent of tablets. Not only did the Kindle change the way people read, Amazon itself changed the face of publishing by becoming a publisher itself and making it possible to sidestep publishers and bookstores. Many writers whose works had been rejected by the large publishing houses, particularly the so-called “Big Six,” felt a sense of schadenfreude as ebooks and self-publishing appeared to pose a threat to conventional publishers that would leave them twisting in the wind. While that hasn’t happened yet, exactly, but even the Big Six see the writing on the wall. Simon & Schuster has now teamed up with Author Solutions to create Archway Publishing, a self-publishing company with staggeringly expensive services. What a difference a couple decades make. In the 1990s when Vantage Press (now closed) published my novel Kamila, self-publishing and “vanity presses” such as Vantage were regarded by mainstream publishers and bookstores with palpable disdain.

With Amazon in the middle of it, a brouhaha arose in 2010 over the wholesale and agency models of ebook pricing, which essentially speaks to who sets the price – the publisher or the retailer. Then there was the Department of Justice lawsuit mess in which the DOJ alleged price-fixing by Apple and five of the Big Six (Random House was not named in the lawsuit.)

The most attractive feature of a short ebooks is of course the price: they generally range from only $0.99 up to $2.99. You can’t go wrong. Well, you can, but it won’t cost you that much.