Book Four

One of the advantages of having the flu is having the time to read. Look on the bright side..right? So yesterday I decided I wanted to read a murder mystery and took one off the pile, The Unquiet Dead, by Ausma Zehanat Khan. I forget why I picked it up originally but I’m glad I did although it is a very distressing and disturbing read. This is not a cosy village mystery.

The death that sparks the investigation is not particularly disturbing. A man falls to his death on the bluffs of Scarborough on the edge of Toronto and it isn’t clear whether he fell or jumped or was pushed. But there are circumstances that bring it to the attention of the Department of Justice and so Esa Khattak from the Community Policing Unit is asked to take a look. Quickly it becomes clear that this death is related to the war in Bosnia in the early ’90s and war crimes. That part of the story is very disturbing.

Khan’s writing is gripping and the story is intense and I learned a lot about a period of recent history that I knew peripherally but not in any detail. I didn’t learn why people turn on people that they have known their whole lives and rape and murder them but I learned a lot about the fact that they did. At the end I felt wrung out and more alarmed at the examples of right wing extremism we see in Canada and south of the border. I didn’t have any better idea of how to stop it though. But maybe it is enough that the danger seems even more real.

There are now five books with Khattak and Detective Rachel Getty. In some ways the dynamic between the two (and the tone of the book as a whole) reminded me of the relationship between Lynley and Havers in Elizabeth George’s mysteries. I won’t expect a light read but I look forward to reading more of them.