Ausma Zehanat Khan

Detective Esa Khattack and his partner, Detective Rachel Getty, investigate the death of a local man who may have been a Bosnian war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, in a haunting debut novel of loss, redemption and the cost of justice.

A Novel

The Unquiet Dead

Maggie Gordon

The Unquiet Dead is a mystery novel tackling a very dark part of human history. Though it provides a powerful critique of the Bosnian war, it fails to deliver a satisfying novel. The foundation of the novel is meant to center on Rachel Getty and her superior Esa Khattak. While Khan hints at interesting character motivations, I never really bought into the things that she claimed the characters were supposed to be. They did not seem particularly close which was unfortunate since other characters kept telling me how important the two were supposed to be to one another. There were also too many mentions of actions that occurred before the events of this book that were never really explained, leaving me to wonder several times if I actually bought the first in the series. Esa in particular felt flat, and his behaviour in this first book made it hard for me to understand how he was supposedly so well-respected. I am not suggesting that characters must be flawless, but in the first book of a series, give me a sense of who this solid, capable character is before you send him off the rails. Otherwise all the comments about how his behaviour is unusual don't mean much to me. 

I enjoyed the whodunit, though the pacing was off. the police work seemed almost drifting with neither character paying much attention to the case. I know this was part of the plot, but if you're writing a mystery/crime novel, there's a delicate balance to hit. The conspiracy was great, and the tension between different conceptions of justice. I just wish there had been less feels for potential significant others and more actual police work.

Despite their many differences, Detective Rachel Getty trusts her boss, Esa Khattak, implicitly. But she's still uneasy at Khattak's tight-lipped secrecy when he asks her to look into Christopher Drayton's death. Drayton's apparently accidental fall from a cliff doesn't seem to warrant a police investigation, particularly not from Rachel and Khattak's team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But when she learns that Drayton may have been living under an assumed name, Rachel begins to understand why Khattak is tip-toeing around this case. It soon comes to light that Drayton may have been a war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. If that's true, any number of people might have had reason to help Drayton to his death, and a murder investigation could have far-reaching ripples throughout the community. But as Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, with no easy answers. Had the specters of Srebrenica returned to haunt Drayton at the end, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death from the Bluffs? In her spellbinding debut The Unquiet Dead, Ausma Zehanat Khan has written a complex and provocative story of loss, redemption, and the cost of justice that will linger with readers long after turning the final page.

Fraser Simons

This was such a pleasant surprise, despite the heavy subject matter. At the start it felt a bit shakey and underdeveloped, and I struggled with it a bit. Literally every facet of it that annoyed me to begin with became pertinent and once the case really starts coming together it became one of the most interesting crime novels I’ve read. There’s some very clever subversions with gender expectation, the case is rooted in real world events in Bosnia, and the dynamics between the characters are also great as they come to a head. But the ending really clinched this as a 5 star book for me. 

Then, after the book there’s thorough notes on the events in Bosnia and how they relate to the book. Fantastic book. Very glad I picked it up. Plan on reading the rest of the series for sure.

Amanda Wells

Buoyed by my recent enjoyment of a detective novel, I thought I'd dive into another one. This one is very different to the Frey & McGray novels on a number of points. It is contemporary, set in Canada, and has a far more serious tone. As it should, given that much of the novel relies on Bosnia and the atrocities that occurred there in the 1990s.

Overall I did like this book quite a bit. There was reference to Andolusia which was intriguing in and of itself (as a history buff). There was a lot of unpacking of the Bosnian war, and the fallout for people who survived. And I liked the development of the two main characters, Getty and Khattak. 

I found the key plot line - the mystery that the detectives are tasked with unravelling - to be not quite as strong as the supporting stories. I also felt a couple of the supporting characters were a little underdeveloped or simple - their motivations for being awful people unclear. In the case of Getty's parents, I think there's scope for that being developed in subsequent novels since this is a series. But for others, I think there may have been a missed opportunity.

All in all - this was a good introduction of a new author and series for me. I'll definitely read the next one and see how Khan develops the 'world' and the characters from here.

The Unquiet Dead A Novel

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