Oi these books! I just fall more in love with the characters with each new story. ( )

Not only do I consider this series, featuring a Muslim officer and his young partner, a smartly written series, but the storylines are so relevant. The characters are wonderfully portrayed, and I always find them so powerful. Community police, this pair is usually based in Toronto, however, a shooting at a mosque will find them traveling to Quebec. Here they will confront racism and bigotry from many different quarters. The shooter still at large, the danger is pervasive. Who can be trusted?

Khan has no problem confronting the many issues current today. These are in your face stories, showing the full range of hatred by those who want and think they are losing their country, and will do anything to keep that from happening. Rachel and Esa have an unusual partnership based on caring and trust. As a Muslim, Esa sometimes has problems separating his feelings and remaining neutral, when he is confronted by outright hatred. This had a few more relationship issues, than the others, and to be fair I sometimes found them a distraction. I still consider this series one of the best written, and the issues they tackle relevant today. ( )

This is the fifth entry in the excellent procedural series featuring Esa Kattak and Rachel Getty. While part of a series, the author has ensured that a first-time reader of the series isn’t at a loss.

In this outing, Khatta and Getty are assigned to investigate a mass shooting at a mosque in a small town. The local police arrested a young Muslim man who was helping the wounded at the scene while ignoring the priest who was holding a knife. Kattak and Getty find themselves investigating a crime in the midst of hate and panic fueled by the rants of a talk-show host. However, things may not be as simple as they appear on the surface.

The book is very well written and the author’s writing style feels like the tension and stress generated by the crime and its aftermath. However, she is careful in giving the reader the clues as they are uncovered by the two detectives. Her characters are well-drawn and real. This book is torn from the playbook of hate-mongering and violence. While set in Quebec, this book could just as easily have been set in any town or city in the US.

If you like police procedurals with meticulous detectives, an author who doesn’t hold back clues from the reader, and with a touch of politics and romance, this book is for you and should be placed at the top of your TBR pile.

Thanks to Minotaur and Amazon for a free ARC. ( )

When Allison Ziegler at Minotaur Books messaged me to offer an ARC of Ausma Zehanat Khan's next Esa Khattak/Rachel Getty mystery, I nearly lost my mind. I already had my digital and print copies pre-ordered, but a chance to get my hands on my favorite author's book early? Yes, please!

As promised, I dropped everything else I was reading and started this one. The prime case that brings our detectives together is a shooting at a mosque in a small town in Quebec. Twelve people are viciously gunned down while at prayer, and a young man is also disfigured. This turns out to be just the latest, and most horrific act of anti-Muslim violence perpetrated in this town. Esa and Rachel must contend with not only the fear in the Muslim community, but also a highly placed leak in the local investigation and the rampant racism.

Khan's stories are mysteries with a social conscience. The last, A Dangerous Crossing focused on the Syrian Refugee Crisis, and left me angry and wanting to help. Reading A Deadly Divide was even harder. For me, I think this is because I can convince myself that the events in Syria can't happen "here", but I live in a country "led" by Trump. I have watched the country I love be torn apart by hate and witnessed white supremacists become more emboldened with each passing day. Not only could the events of A Deadly Divide happen here, they have, and it breaks my heart.

As always, Khan does an excellent job laying out the clues and bringing the reader along on the journey as Esa and Rachel piece things together. The pacing was consistent throughout and the solution was both satisfying and believable. I am crossing my fingers for Rachel's potential romantic relationship, but the relationship between Esa and Alizah often felt forced or awkward. I would have preferred less of Alizah's angst. I'm truly terrified by Esa's stalker. I'm worried about what's going to happen with that storyline, how it will impact Sehr and Rachel, and I can feel the ulcer forming already.

Overall, I would say Ausma Zehanat Khan has done it again. She's written a compelling mystery that does what all good books should do: it makes the reader think, question, and feel. I look forward to picking up my print copy in February and mailing out more to friends and family as they catch up on the series. 4.5 stars ( )

Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty have investigated many crimes that grew out of fear and hatred rooted in bigotry. The backgrounds to their stories are varied: the Balkan war, home-grown radicalization, dissidents in Iran, migrants in Greece hoping for a better life. In the fifth book of this absorbing series, the team doesn't have far to travel, just over the border of the neighboring province, Quebec, and into a maelstrom of racist violence. A mass shooting in a mosque has left an unknown number of worshipers injured and many killed. One of the weapons used was found in the hands of a priest who was at the scene, but an African immigrant has been arrested by the local police, who seem all too unwilling to admit that tides of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment fanned by a popular radio host may have something to do with it.

As usual, Khan doesn't reach for simple explanations. The charming and down-to-earth Quebecois detective leading the investigation seems oblivious to the racism around him. After all, Quebec has had to fight to retain its distinctive culture, surrounded by Anglophone Canada. The university up on the hill has brought in wealthy international students from the Middle East and North Africa, changing the complexion of the community, threatening its identity. A secretive group, the Wolf Allegiance, promises to defend pure-laine Quebecoise women from immigrants, with violence if need be, the kind of men so often called "lone wolves" forming a pack. Muslim students who run a radio show to clap back against the popular talk show host are constantly under threat. Then there are the Goth girls with matching tattoos of a blood-tipped fleur-de-lis who seem to be defying all the cultural codes.

The intricate plot avoids simple answers, creating a web of complicated motivations and possibilities. Resisting easy and simple explanations for violence, Khan looks beneath the surface at the dark currents flowing through communities, across borders, through social media, and over the airwaves. "I wrote this book," she explains in an author's note, "because I have long studied the incipient and incremental nature of hate and the fatal places hate often takes us. I wrote it to illuminate the connections between rhetoric, polemics, and action . . . The things we choose to turn a blind eye to because we assess their impact as negligible on our lives – especially when we are not members of any vulnerable group – have the
power to harm us all more deeply than we know." It's tempting to turn to mysteries, where justice is generally served and conflict is brought to a resolution, when the world seems overwhelming. Ausma Zehanat Khan uses the conventions of the genre to explore the world we live in, one that badly needs more justice.

Reposted from Reviewing the Evidence.