Khan takes today's headlines and weaves them into intriguing mysteries. In this case, the issues are the crisis of refugees/migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Greece, and the Syrian war, issues unfortunately as relevant today as when the story takes place in 2016. Esa and Rachel are called in to investigate the disappearance of Nathan Clare's sister. A well-plotted mystery with twists and turns. My only complaints - at times, background information about the crises overrides the story, and the descriptions of the main character's romantic interests sometimes slip into Bollywood-style melodrama. Still, this is highly recommended.

Review based on an ARC from Netgalley.

3.5 When Nathan Clare asks for his friend Esa's help to find his sister Audrey, who is missing in Greece, trying to help the refugees, he accepts. With the approval of the prime minister, he and his partner Rachel, find themselves in Greece, right in the midst of the crisis. This is an unusual series in that Esa is a Canadian police officer who is also a Muslim, it is also more literary that other offerings in this genre. This is the fourth in series, and is as strong as those who came before.

The second book, this one a novel,highlighting the refugee crisis. Although fiction, it was as disturbing as the nonfiction book I read. The figures of those seeking safety, the danger they put themselves in seeking safety,the agencies trying to help and those trying to exploit. So many of the young go missing, over 10,000 used as slaves,many as sex slaves. The storyline was at times confusing, so many involved, it was hard to keep track of who was who. It was, however, a worthy read, taking a current,horrific crisis and building a story around real facts. The author's note at books end highlights the true facts behind this terrible crime against humanity, a crisis with no easy answers, and no end in sight.

ARC from Netgalley.

Inspector Esa Khattak's friend Nathan Clare asks for help when his sister Audrey, who works for an NGO that facilitates the Canadian government’s efforts to resettle Syrian refugees, has gone missing in Greece. Audrey vanished from the island of Lesvos on the same day that the bodies of a French Interpol agent and a Syrian whose case she was supervising were found at the NGO’s offices there.

Khattak and Sergeant Rachel Getty travel to Greece and witness the conditions in the wretched refugee camps. Tracing Audrey’s last movements, they meet a refugee named Ali who is searching for Israa, a girl whose disappearance may be connected to their investigation. Khattak and Rachel follow a trail that takes them from Greece, to the Turkish–Syrian border, and across Europe. Audrey had been trying to deliver evidence of Syrian war crimes to an independent entity as well as stopping the kidnapping of Syrian children.

This is a suspenseful and timely story and another strong entry in this series.

I received an eARC via Netgalley and St. Martin's Press with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book and provided this review.

4 stars
Thanks to NetGalley, Minotaur Books/St. Martin's Press and the author for sending me this ARC ebook. I found the the story to be absorbing and depressing. Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak, RCMP police officer partners, are sent to Greece on a personal mission by the Prime Minister to find a Canadian who has gone missing on the Greek island of Lesvos, near mainland Turkey. She is the sister of a rich friend of the PM.
Audrey Clare was on the island as a volunteer, helping refugees coming to the island in hopes of finding a new home in the European Union. The book weaves the elements of human suffering, human trafficking, people smugglers and the abysmal conditions of the refugee camps into a coherent whole. Esa and Rachel do find Audrey and we get glimpses of their complicated personal lives, evidently discussed in previous books in this series. This is book 4 in the series and I suspect that I would have enjoyed it more if I had read the previous books in the series. Still, I recommend it.
One quote: "The pain of it struck him, in new and vulnerable places. He was leaving his history behind. The city of jasmine, the country that desolated childhood. In Turkey, everything was different: a mixture of fear, lonieliness, desperation, hunger, ridicule and cruelty; exploitation leavened by occasional kindness."

Full review to follow - 3.5/5 stars - rounded up to 4 stars for rating
My introduction to Ausma Zehanat Khan!

In her latest novel, Khan's Canadian police duo are tasked by their Prime Minister with discovering what has happened to Audrey Clare, a Canadian citizen working with an NGO in Greece, helping Syrian refugees who have washed up on Greek islands. While she has been trying to help these people no one wants, she has apparently run afoul of some person or group...she has disappeared and two people working with her are dead, shot dead.

This detective work will require tact as well as tactics, as they will be meeting with politicians, government officials, members of other police services, refugees themselves, who have no reason to trust anyone, idealistic volunteers at the refugee sites, and representatives of those groups opposing all migrants, no matter what their story.

This book is as current as it is exciting. It also opens up the inner lives of both Rachel and Esa as they each, in their own way, slowly chart paths forward in their personal lives.

Khan provides a brief history of the war in Syria as well as two bibliographies for extra reading; the first provides non-fiction, history sources while the second provides cultural, interview, and other stories since the beginning of this war.

I strongly recommend this book and series. I'm already
looking forward to the next episode.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

My first time reading this author. The characters had been presented in earlier books in the series. One is able to read this tale without knowing the earlier development of the main characters. The story begins in Greece goes to Canada and heads back to Greece, Turkey, and the Netherlands. Who are the 'good' people and who are the 'bad'? A really mystery. Fascinating information about the refugees, too.

From the review at Reviewing the Evidence: '"This series, remarkable for its intelligent and sensitive use of stories that could be ripped from the headlines if we were paying attention, turns human rights issues into compelling fiction. Though this entry has some minor flaws – it's slow to start and the fraught interpersonal relationships aren't nearly as interesting as the investigation – readers will gain a vivid sense of the human experience of the refugee crisis and the violent circumstances that send people fleeing the home they love. Khan is not one to provide simple answers, but she does a wonderful job of finding humanity in world events and bringing it to life on the page."

Khan has written a wonderful and informative book about the Syria refugee crisis, wrapped in the continuing story of Rachel Getty and Eva Khattak. Don't worry if you haven't read the previous books, as this is actually the most self contained of the four. In fact, it might have benefited from two or three lines of explanation about a variety of things (what happened to Esa's wife is tops on that list) for those of us who might have forgotten the fine points and for those new to the series. That said, this time, Esa and Rachel are in Greece searching for Audrey Clare, Esa's childhood friend and sister of Nathan Clare, who is wealthy and influential enough to get the Prime Minister of Canada to endorse the effort (and their time away from their jobs with Community Policing.). The camps are a nightmare but even worse is what has happened to the Syrian people-in Syria and as they try to make their way to new homes in other countries. Canada has handled this differently than the US; it's notable, I think , that Khan does not cast judgment on countries or politicians, only on individuals who have used this crisis for their own profit. You won't look at life jackets the same way ever again. What a horror show and if this can make anyone feel empathy for Syrian refugees, then it's even better than I thought. It isn't a procedural and it's not really a mystery, it more of a contained chase for truth. You'll meet some interesting characters, starting of course with Rachel and Esa, but also Ali and Sami and the rest. thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this terrific novel.

This is book 4 in the Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak series, I did not realize that there were three other books that came before this when I started reading it. I did not feel as if I missed anything, so I believe it works well as a standalone.

Ausma Zehanat Khan’s biography says that her parents are heirs to a complex story of migration to and from three different continents. And she, Ausma, is a former adjunct professor at American and Canadian universities, holding a Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law. I can’t help but think that some of her own background may be helpful while writing this series. She certainly did an excellent job of adding little details that made the story come to life. The characters and descriptions of people and places were very well done.

I enjoyed reading this book and hope others will too.

Khan is super talented at creating smart and thoughtful detective procedurals that also incorporate important current politics and social issues. This time around, Canadian detectives Getty and Esa find themselves looking into the disappearance of a friend’s sister who vanished while in Greece helping Syrian refugees. With two dead bodies discovered, there are many questions: Is she a murderer on the run? Hiding from danger? Or also dead?

This is the fourth book in the series featuring Inspector Esa Khattak and Sgt. Rachel Getty. This time the two go to Greece to look for Audrey Clare, the sister of Esa’s friend Nathan Clare, who has gone missing
while helping to resettle Syrian refugees. Two bodies were found in the offices of her NGO so did Audrey go into hiding in fear for her life or did she run after murdering two people or was she abducted?

The mystery of Audrey’s disappearance is sufficiently interesting, but it is not difficult to guess the ultimate outcome of the investigation. Often the ongoing humanitarian crisis takes the spotlight of the narrative. There is a great deal of information about Assad’s brutality against Syrians, the plight of the refugees, and the reaction and inaction of various countries to the crisis. There is no doubt that the author has done her research; a list of books and websites is recommended at the end. I recently read The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay, a book which recounts the year-long journey of a 12-year-old Afghani refugee; A Dangerous Crossing touches on many of the issues found in the non-fiction book. For example, Passarlay concludes that human smuggling has “a highly organized infrastructure” and Khan echoes with the statement that “The point is, all of this is a very big operation, a wellcoordiinated operation.”

The problem is that the book is sometimes bogged down by lengthy passages of exposition that would be more appropriate in an essay: “Assad was engaged in a wholesale slaughter of his people. Set aside for the moment the destruction of Syria’s cities: their colleges, hospitals, and schools, their mosques and ancient souks. Even if that wasn’t totted up in a column of unthinkable loss, there was the question of Syria’s people. Syria had been a nation of twenty-two million. Fully half that population was displaced; seven million internally, while five million had fled Assad’s incalculable violence. The abject misery of Syria’s prison system needed to be weighed on a separate scale of horrors.”

Though this book can be read as a standalone, I would strongly recommend that it be read in the proper sequence. The relationships among the characters will be much better understood if the previous three books in the series have been read. All the investigations of these prior installments are mentioned. For instance, the Drayton inquiry is alluded to at least four times; that is the case in the first book, The Unquiet Dead. There are seven references to Algonquin, a setting which features prominently in the second book, The Language of Secrets. There are at least a dozen references to the case in Iran; this case is the focus of the third book, Among the Ruins. In A Dangerous Crossing, characters like Hassan and Laine are discussed with virtually no explanation; these references will mean nothing to readers who have not read the other novels.

And these personal relationships are important. They certainly get in the way in this investigation. Nathan doesn’t want Rachel to read some of his emails with Audrey, and Esa’s sister doesn’t want her brother to read her correspondence with Audrey. Readers who have not followed the series may be left mystified by Nathan and Ruksh’s reluctance. Actually, the lack of trust among several characters complicates the search for Audrey; this wariness is understandable in refugees but not so much in other investigators.

The many romantic tensions, most often the result of misunderstandings, are becoming tedious. How many times must Esa and Sehr misinterpret each other’s actions? How often does Rachel’s insecurity have to affect her relationship with Nathan? There are reasons why Rachel lacks confidence when it comes to romance, but after a while, her diffidence becomes annoying. We are to see her as a dynamic character who has learned from past experiences (“She couldn’t bear to be the reminder of someone’s tragedy again” and “To deny her importance to someone else wasn’t a pattern she intended to repeat”), but she still comes across as immature. Audrey describes her brother as a “Bumbling Lamb” but that descriptor could also apply to Rachel.

A Muslim police investigator as a protagonist is a welcome addition to the mystery/crime genre, and the character of Esa continues to provide insight into the tenets of Islam and the mind of a devout but moderate Muslim. He and Rachel are an odd partnership but their working relationship is based on mutual understanding, respect, and affection. I will continue to follow the series though I hope the romantic entanglements take a back seat. My bet is that the next case will see the return of Laine: Nathan says, “’There’s something wrong with Laine, something different about her. I have to admit I’m worried, I wish I could say otherwise.’ Esa had noticed it too . . . and he wondered if this was ground they were going to tread again.”

Note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

3.75 stars.

I have read three of the four books in Ausma Zehanat Khan’s Getty and Khattak series, and I think A Dangerous Crossing was my favourite.

Khan’s series is based in Toronto and always focuses on crimes that have a contemporary international facet. In this case, Getty and Khattak are called upon to investigate the disappearance of a Canadian women working to assist with Syrian refugees in Greece. Khan does an impressive job of taking a fairly close look at the complexity and brutality of what is happening in Syria, the plight of refugees and the reaction of the international community. This was my favourite part of the book, and I feel that Khan is really improving her ability to highlight complex political issues while telling a good story.

I have one caveat, but not serious enough to deter me from enjoying her books. I do find that, unlike other mystery series that I really like, Khan is a bit heavy handed with her characters’ emotions – especially when it comes to their various romantic interests. In the blink of an eye, they go from solving serious crimes and uncovering atrocities to being preoccupied with their respective fraught love interests. This explains my small deduction from a 4 star rating.

I will nevertheless continue to read Khan’s books. I love the Toronto setting and her engagement with contemporary international issues. I just hope the characters mature a bit in their private lives…

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

This is an engrossing mystery peopled with intelligent, moral and brave characters but more than that it reminds us of the plight of refugees, especially those from Syria, now that the issue has left the front pages of our newspapers and also shows us how well the people of Canada have dealt with giving many of them a safe harbor. Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak have been tasked by the Candian prime minister with trying to find out what happened to Audrey Clare, the sister of their friend Nathan, a member of a wealthy Canadian family. Audrey has been heading an NGO entitled Woman2Woman in Greece, helping those refugees who have landed on the island of Lesvus but she is now missing and two people have been found dead in the tent that serves as the headquarters of Woman2Woman. The case is personal because of the friendships between them all, and Rachel and Esa find themselves on a difficult trail. This is an amazing story which I will long remember and I cannot recommend it highly enough.