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The Unquiet Dead (Rachel Getty & Esa Khattak #1)

Ausma Zehanat Khan

Start date: February 12, 2019

Finish date: March 12, 2019

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Mar 11, 2019 David rated it liked it

The Unquiet Dead was the title selected for our March discussion with Bettendorf Library's Get Lit Book Discussion Group. I had been looking forward to reading this book since we finalized our selections and schedule for fall 2018 - summer 2019. This is the first title in a series of five books (so far). According to the author’s website, the series has been optioned for a television show.

I was initially intrigued to read about the character of Esa Khattak, a Muslim detective, who is the head o The Unquiet Dead was the title selected for our March discussion with Bettendorf Library's Get Lit Book Discussion Group. I had been looking forward to reading this book since we finalized our selections and schedule for fall 2018 - summer 2019. This is the first title in a series of five books (so far). According to the author’s website, the series has been optioned for a television show.

I was initially intrigued to read about the character of Esa Khattak, a Muslim detective, who is the head of the Community Policing Section in Toronto. However, my big take-away from the book were all of the things I learned about the Bosnian War and the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Bosniaks during the war.

The author, Ausma Zehanat Khan, holds a PhD in International Human Rights Law. She does an excellent job of striking the appropriate balance between having respect and sensitivity for the gravity of her subject matter and writing an entertaining mystery.

The plot of this mystery centers on the death of a man going by the name of Christopher Drayton. Drayton has fallen to his death off a bluff near his residence. While there is no initial evidence of foul play, Esa Khattak is tasked with the investigation because of the suspicion that Drayton may actually be Bosnian war criminal, Dražen Kristić. As Khattak and his partner Rachel Getty, unravel the secret behind Drayton's true identity, motives and suspects begin to appear, a greedy fiancé, her possibly jealous ex-husband, the curator from a museum that would benefit from Drayton’s bequest, not to mention anyone from the community of Bosnian refugees in Toronto, whom may have discovered Drayton’s secret identity. Compounding the problem of the ample number of suspects and possible motives is the fact that Khattak and Getty still cannot definitively prove whether or not Drayton's fall was an accident, suicide, or murder.

Each chapter starts with its own epigraph, some are quotes from the Qur’an and others are excerpts from letters and testimony from survivors of the massacre in Srebrenica. Woven cleverly into the plot their import becomes more apparent at the conclusion of the book. All of the sources for this material is documented in an extensive notes section at the end of the book.

I had two small quibbles with the book. First, I felt some of Kahn’s characterizations were uneven. There are several instances where characters behaved differently from what the reader expects given how the author presents them to us initially. My second complaint is with several of the sub-plots. Khattak’s stormy relationship with a previous partner and Getty’s dysfunctional family, for example, receive a substantial amount of coverage in the book. However, these plot lines are left mostly unresolved. This is an ongoing series though, and perhaps these plotlines receive further development in the subsequent books. I do intend to read them and find out.

Overall, this book is a very good debut novel. I recommend this book for anyone that enjoys police procedural series and anyone who is looking for a protagonist outside of the mold typical of this genre.

One note of caution, while I would not characterize the book as overly graphic, in the sections containing letters and testimony from some of the victims of the war crimes in Bosnia, there are descriptions of physical violence, including the mass rapes that were used a tool of terror during the war.
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Dec 16, 2018 Emily rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club, fiction

Get ready to settle in for the night with this one. Once you start it, you aren't going to want to stop reading it.

This debut novel tackles big topics in this crime mystery thriller. A guy, who may not be who he says he is, falls (or is he pushed?) off a cliff one night, and Esa Khattak and his partner Rachel Getty are pulled onto the case after a friend of Esa's tells him there may be some big secrets behind this assumed accident. What follows is an, at times, confusing yet slow-building thrill Get ready to settle in for the night with this one. Once you start it, you aren't going to want to stop reading it.

This debut novel tackles big topics in this crime mystery thriller. A guy, who may not be who he says he is, falls (or is he pushed?) off a cliff one night, and Esa Khattak and his partner Rachel Getty are pulled onto the case after a friend of Esa's tells him there may be some big secrets behind this assumed accident. What follows is an, at times, confusing yet slow-building thriller about the lengths people will go to be heard and avenged.

I say confusing, because if you're like me, a mid-twenties American reader, you might not know much of anything about the massacre of Srebrenica or the atrocities committed against the Bosnian people at the hands of the Serbs. It wasn't we learned about in my history classes growing up in the early 2000s. Possibly because that's when all the trials were happening. So, I am willing to honestly say that I am almost 100% ignorant about those events. My only knowledge was a Bosnian childhood friend whose family came to America as refugees, but even then, she and I were just children. No matter my ignorance though, I can only hope that future generations are being taught about this.

So, I walked into this book blind. Luckily, I do believe the author does an excellent job of informing the reader about the crime acted out on these people in beautiful and tragic flashbacks and conversations. She gives voice to some of those dark and terrible acts through her characters and actual testimony from survivors. It's horrible and yet, you can't stop reading. As you progress through the novel, you come to realize, along with Rachel and Esa, that there is no good or satisfactory ending for a story like this.

It's that slow burn, gradually filling you with dread and conflict. You want justice for the victims of such terrible, violent, soul-destroying acts, but at what cost? More death? What if the person who's dead was one of the worst people in the world and their death may not have been an accident? How hard do you fight for them to have justice? You're plagued with this searching and ultimately unanswerable questions throughout this whole book. It stays with you long after the last page is read.

There were very few things I struggled with. There are strong trigger warning that I would attach to this book, including: war, mass genocide, rape, child abuse, violence against men, women, and children. The list goes on. These topics on their own do not make a book bad. For me personally, there were a few of these triggering moments in the book that did effect me deeply and painfully.

There were some small contextual moments that made it hard to follow the scenes, like missing identifiers during long/important passages of dialogue, meaning I either lost track of who was speaking or had no idea from the beginning of the conversation. One small pet peeve of mine, that really has no bearing at all whatsoever on the merit of the book is when debut authors tend to use obscure or large, unfamiliar words when a more well-known one would work better, whether for the reader or even in the context of the story. Maybe to appear more well-versed or written, I don't know, it just always irks me. I noticed she tended to do this, and at times, it created a disruption for me in the flow of the page. Again, though, this is just a small pet peeve of mine. ...more

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