This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart


Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I continued in the Blackwater Falls series. The town of that name is a smaller community not far from Denver. It seems to be a real melting pot with Mexicans (Catholics), black refugees from Somalia, and Muslims from several Middle Eastern and Asian locations.

The focus centers around the team of Community Response officers who work with the Sheriff, Denver police, FBI and other law enforcement. Their cases revolve around the different cultures and the sensitive issues in dealing with them. The team is not a fan of the Sheriff.

I am not knowledgeable about all these religions and cultures so I find those aspects interesting. The main character Inaya is a police officer who lives with her Muslim family who came from Afghanistan. The other members of the team come from many of the other cultures. The team has become close knit as they deal with bad situations.

There are two cases of officer involved shootings. The emotional powder keg of law enforcement and the communities of those killed requires the unit to have a cool head and dig for actual facts. There were instances of racial, cultural and religion bias or hate, along with misogyny. Inaya works with the team, and tries to help the various families in the community while solving the murders.

There are political and religious harassments, as well as police corruption making it all more difficult. Inaya works hard and with compassion for the victims and families. The cases get solved and the obvious solutions are not the answers. The realities of why the killings happened are much more complex. Blood Betrayal is another intriguing look at the different cultural and family interactions.

This story is fraught with tension. Two young men are killed the same night in two different neighborhoods by police gunfire. One is a Black artist; the other is a Latino college student/musician. The Community Response team is also fraught with tension as its various members deal with personal issues that could affect their professional actions. Their investigations are hampered by other police personnel even while the affected communities prepare to demonstrate their hatred of unpunished police brutality. This is a very realistic and thoughtful story that I could not put down.

When the book opens with a policeman shooting a young man, "armed" with a spray can of paint, you may think this is a police story. As the story moves forward, you may think police are targeting young men of color. However, this is a very intricate story that covers complex issues such as societal, racial, ethnic, religious, marital/relationship, and professional.

The reader is kept guessing until the end.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book through NetGalley.

A disturbing novel of betrayal, love and hate.

The Community Response Unit is called out to two police shootings of young men—one Latino, one Black.
Mateo Ruiz was gunned down by Kelly Broda, a police officer in Denver precinct. It turns out Mateo had been holding a spray can, not a gun.
Harry Cooper from Blackwater Falls had from all the evidence shot Duante Young. Young was a graffiti artist and he also had a spray can.
Detective Inaya Rahman is part of the Community Response Unit. Their job is to determine what has happened in police shootings of unarmed people.
The community have no doubt that the deaths will be white washed.
Lieutenant Waqas Seif heads the Response team. He’s also an FBI agent. Part of his job is to track down the white supremacist who have infiltrated the Blackwater Falls police.
Inaya Rahman is a Muslim woman who had been attacked by her fellow officers at Chicago Police for wearing an Hijab and being Muslim. John Broda was part of that attack. Now he wants her help to clear his son.
Broda offers Inaya a chance to clear the name of the last victim she’d been investigating in Chicago. Another young man shot by police.
Their investigations will lead them through a labyrinth of complications that reach back into the past.
The second book in a series but it can easily be read independently. I must say though this was such a compelling read I feel pulled to go back and read the first in the series.

A Minotaur Books ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher.
(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)

This is Book 2 in the Blackwater Falls Series. In Blackwater Falls, Colorado, veteran police officer Harry Cooper is hot on the heels of some local vandals when the situation turns deadly: believing one of them has a gun, Harry opens fire and Duante Reed, a young Black man, is killed. The "gun" in his hands was a bottle of spray paint. Meanwhile, in nearby Denver, a drug raid goes south and a Latino teen, Mateo Ruiz, is also killed. Detective Inaya Rahman must get past her own prejudices and look into the circumstances of the killings and find evidence that can help calm the situations.

The joy in this book is not found in its being a police procedural. By defining their assignments as quasi-policing, the author has extinguished any need for her storytelling to focus on procedure. Instead it is a tightly constructed examination of motive, opportunity, and culpability oozing through interviews and observation, a highly intellectualized examination of facts known and accumulated over time in all their subtlety. It also gently introduces the reader to Muslim families in all their diversity and focus as normative against a backdrop of policing abuses and minority experiences. Highly original and taut..

Blood Betrayal
By Ausma Zehanat Khan

This book is about love: the love for family; for friends; for co-religionists; for those of our ethnicity – in short, love for those like us. But it is also about fear and hatred – of those who are NOT like us, those that we cannot – or we choose not to - understand. Because they are foreign to us, we do not reach out to overcome the differences we see.

This is the story of police. Some are dirty cops, some claim to be patriots saving the country from the immigrants, both legal and illegal. And some, like the Community Response team, whose job is investigating – and hopefully mitigating – the interactions between police and the brown and black communities they serve.

There are all kinds of issues here: the inequalities between men and women; the generational outlook on homosexuality; the misunderstanding of intent both by the authorities and by the communities at large; the role of religion and the loss of a homeland; the intrusive oversight of government in the name of national security.

This is a very thought-provoking book. In the end, it seems to say that love can indeed conquer all – until it doesn't.

This is the second book by Ausma Zehanat Khan set in the town of Blackwater Falls, Colorado.

We return to detective Inaya, her partner Cat, and boss Seif who are part of the Community Relations unit. Tasked with investigating interactions between the police and the community, these officers are often distrusted by both sides. The area has suffered a lot of racial and religious tension in recent years, made worse by the local ultra conservative Christian biker gang, and a sheriff who is corrupt.

Two young men are shot and killed by police officers on the same night. One, a young black man, is shot by a veteran and well-liked officer, Harry Cooper, who feared for his life. It turns out however, that the young man wasn't holding a gun, but a can of spray paint.
John Broda, who was involved in violence towards Inaya when she worked in Chicago, shows up and begs her to help his son, Kelly, who is accused of killing a Latino teenager while he and his female partner where chasing drug dealers.

Add in the mix Areesha, a local leader and civil rights lawyer, and the families of the young men who died and there is lot going on. The characters are excellent, and in this book we find out more about their families and their histories and cultural stories. All are told in a way that adds to the narrative. We learn a lot from the three women, all trying to make a difference to the community in their individual ways.

The plot was complex, with many additional characters, but the author did a wonderful job of keeping all of these people distinct, and the plot moved along at a great pace.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and can't wait for the next one from this author.

Read this for Khan's unique take on community policing through the eyes of Detective Inaya Rahman, who moved home to Blackwater Falls from Chicago and removed her hijab after a horrible incident in Chicago but know in advance that understanding events here are highly dependent on having read the first book. There have been two police related shootings of young men and this is about those investigations. Unfortunately, Khan has packed too much in- there are too many characters, too many threads, too much in general and I actually found myself a bit confused as to who was who and their roles. I'd very much looked forward to this novel but found myself struggling. None of the characters- not Inaya, not Areesha, not Cat, and not Qas- got enough page time. Thanks to Netgalley for ARC. Regardless of how I felt about this installment, I'm hoping for another in the series.

Ausma Zehanat Khan is back with book two in the Blackwater Falls series, featuring Muslim detective Inaya Rahman and the Community Response team. This multi-ethnic unit, based in a Denver suburb, is investigating two cases where young men of color were allegedly killed by police officers in the line of duty.

Duante Young was a street artist shot by an older cop with a clean record, who mistook a spray paint can for a weapon. Mateo Ruiz was an engineering student and musician shot outside a nightclub during a drug raid. Rookie cop Kelly Broda is the prime suspect. Kelly’s father, John Broda, assaulted and harassed Inaya when she was on the Chicago force. Now, he turns up at her home asking for help in clearing his son’s name. Are the two crimes connected? Is a renegade group of cops setting up situations where officers can shoot black and brown men under the pretext of justified threat?

The recurring theme – in both the crimes and the detectives’ personal lives – is fathers and their sons, with Kelly and John Broda being the most obvious pairing. In addition to the complexities of the investigation, I enjoyed seeing the members of the Community Response team develop. Lt. Qas Seif struggles with his younger brothers who want to return to the Middle East. Profiler Catalina Hernandez is experiencing marital strife when her activist husband accuses her of working for the other side. Inaya, who takes her Muslim faith seriously, wonders if she can trust John Broda, as well as why her father is silent about his time in Afghanistan.

I look forward to more installments in this unique police procedural series.

Blood Betrayal is essentially a police procedural / mystery, but with a difference. The setting is the Denver, Colorado area, specifically a town named Blackwater Falls and the two main characters are police officers with the Community Response Unit and they are both Muslim. The area has seen racial and religious tensions in the past (see the first book in the series, titled Blackwater Falls) and that hasn’t changed much. This book centers on two different police shootings of young men, one black and one Latine. A continuing story arc involves the corruption of the local sheriff and the dominance of a white supremacist motorcycle group. One of the two Muslim detectives is female, so you can add misogyny into the mix!

I loved the characters of Inaya Rahman, the Muslim police detective, and her boss, Seif, who has downplayed/hidden his Middle Eastern heritage. They make quite an interesting pair. We get more backstory about both of their families this time. Inaya’s dad is Afghan and her mother Pakistani. Seif’s dad was Palestinian and his mother Iranian. Seif’s two younger brothers live with him and are a bit hot-tempered. All of this is relevant to the story.

I really enjoyed several of the side characters as well, such as Cat (Caterina) Hernandez, Inaya’s partner, and Areesha Adams, a black community activist lawyer. They both play large roles in both books.

The audiobook was narrated beautifully by Fareeda Pasha. I bounced between the audiobook and the ebook for this title, which was very convenient and allowed me to keep going with the story, finishing it in just a few days.

Thank you to Recorded Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook and to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

As a fan of Ausma Zehanet Khan’s Blackwater Falls, I eagerly requested an egalley of Blood Betrayal, the second installment in her Blackwater Falls series. While mysteries are sometimes excellent escapist fiction, I kept feeling that much of Blood Betrayal seemed uncannily real.

Chapter 1 opens as Harry Cooper, a Blackwater Falls officer patrolling the street alone at night, finds himself chasing two young hoodlums. Graffiti has been appearing all over town, and Harry believes he has encountered two perpetrators. An average but well-respected cop with a clean record, Harry thinks of going out on a high point, retiring with one “last collar.” When the young men split up, one climbing a wall, Harry follows the other, issuing warning after warning, doing everything by the book as he has always done. Then the young black man charges Harry, one arm raised in a menacing stance, something in his hand. Harry’s gun goes off. The young man falls, the object he is carrying now rolling away down the street. Harry calls for help and unsuccessfully attempts to stop the blood as the ambulance pulls up. Duante Young, hardly more than a teen, becomes the latest black man to die at the hand of the police.

The same night, Mateo Ruiz, a young Hispanic man, dies in nearby Denver. The gun belongs to Kelly Broda, who recently joined the Denver police.

With the job of seeing that victims and their families receive justice, the Denver Police Department’s Community Response Unit (CRU) is sent in to investigate. Readers of the first book in the series have already met Lieutenant Waqas “Qas” Seif, detectives Inaya Rahman and Catalina Rivera Hernandez, and recent recruit Jaime Webb as well as Blackwater Falls’ questionable Sherrif Grant, civil rights lawyer Areesha Adams, and Lincoln West, member of a local Christian motorcycle gang called The Disciples. They have also met rogue cop John Broda, father of Kelly Broda, whose gun killed Mateo Ruiz. It was John Broda and several others who had viciously attacked head-scarf-wearing Inaya Rahman, then with the Chicago PD, causing her to move to Denver. Now John Broda shows up at Rahman’s home, begging her to help his son.

A former immigration and human rights lawyer and professor, as well as a community activist and long-time writer, Ausma Zehanat Khan knows her subject. With Blood Betrayal, she gives us another multicultural police procedural likely to keep readers up late into the night. Those who like romance and/or family drama will find a touch of each, too. I cannot help thinking what a suspenseful and timely TV series her Blackwater Falls books would make.

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur/St. Martin’s Press for an egalley of Khan’s highly recommended new novel.

Posted to NetGalley and Barnes & Noble.

In the second book in the Blackwater Falls series detective Rahman works on two cases in which young men of color are killed by white police officers. I enjoyed getting to know these characters and their relationships!

Blood Betrayal is the sequel to Blackwater Falls. Blackwater Falls is a town in the USA flush with racist townspeople. Inaya Rahman, a Muslim detective, works with her Community Response Unit on the separate deaths of two racialized people in different cities. Can Inaya and her team uncover the truth to these murders?

I really enjoyed Blood Betrayal (not a surprise because I thought Blackwater Falls was fantastic!). Inaya is a great protagonist and I love that this book continues with the commentary on police brutality and white supremacy, especially in smaller towns in the States. It was well paced and kept me guessing throughout. We also got to know the secondary characters from the first book a bit more, which I always love in a detective series. If you want a new perspective on crime/detective novels or books that aren’t written by a white man, check out Blood Betrayal. It can be read as a standalone, but reading Blackwater Falls first will help a bit.

Thanks to Minotaur books and NetGalley for the eARC.

This series is officially a must read for me, even though this is only the second book in the series. I had to sit with this one for a bit after I finished it because there was a lot to digest in terms of the themes and the characters. Even though it was a heavy read, I could not put the book down once I started it and cannot stop thinking about it. Another relevant, timely tale that tackles tough issues facing this country.

One of the things I love about this series and the author's prior mystery series is the inclusion of difficult themes/issues impacting the communities in which they are set. This novel focuses on police shootings and their aftermath in Blackwater Falls, Colorado. There are two separate shooting incidents that the Denver Police Department's Community Response Unit (CRU) is brought in to investigate, one of which has ties to Detective Inaya Rahman's past. We learn more about her, her family, as well as her coworkers Detective Catalina Hernandez and Lieutenant Waqas Seif. I feel like I am deeply invested in their lives due to their compelling backstories and how fully formed/three dimensional they seem. The story is intense, both from a professional and personal standpoint for the three characters who all find themselves at crossroads. The cases and the character development were equally gripping to me and kept me wanting to read "just one more chapter."

This book will challenge your thinking, especially as each character wrestles with their own demons, past and present. I felt like the outcomes of the two shootings also challenged my beliefs and thoughts about how they would turn out. I felt like I was experiencing the same emotions as some of the characters as we learned the motives and reasons for the shootings. The resolution of one was particularly heartbreaking to me. While this story was fictional, it could have easily been ripped from the headlines.

I think it would be easy enough to read this as a stand-alone novel, but you should 100% read the first book in the series if you have not had a chance to read it yet. It is excellent and this follow-up is equally stellar. It will stay with me for some time. And I cannot wait to find out what comes next for the CRU team in Blackwater Falls.

Many thanks to Minotaur for the NetGalley copy and a chance to read the latest installment in the Blackwater Falls series early!

BIPOC Police Procedural in which a detective and her team investigate two cases of lethal force, the shooting death of an unarmed street artist and a teen killed during a drug raid.

4/5 stars: This is the newest entry entry in Khan's Blackwater Falls series and it's a gripping police procedural with an interesting twist. Khan's MC is a detective assigned to a Community Response Unit (CRU) that take on police accountability and their latest cases involve two different incidents of lethal force. While the book's told in multiple POVs, the MC, her boss and team members take the lead with additional viewpoints included such as a civil rights attorney representing one of the victims family and the accused LEOs. I very much appreciate how Khan's uses this to show all sides of these tough cases. Additionally, Khan's characters are diverse and complex and yet remain incredibly relatable. Most importantly, Khan's crafted two different gripping lethal force investigations that tackle very real world issues with aplomb. While Khan handles the tough topics in this book with sensitivity, you'll want to take care and check CWs. As this is the second in the series, be sure to pick up book one, Blackwater Falls.

I received this eARC thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review. Publishing dates are subject to change.

Thank you to #StMartinsPress, #MinotaurBooks, and #NetGalley for providing this #ARC Advance Reading Copy. Expected publication date is November 7, 2023.

Fast paced • Reflective • Police procedural • 3 Stars

In Blackwater Falls, Colorado, veteran police officer Harry Cooper, believing Duante Reed, a young Black, has a gun opens fire killing Duante. He didn’t have a gun, just a can of spray paint. In nearby Denver, a drug raid goes south and a Latino teen, Mateo Ruiz, is also killed.

Pakistani born Inaya Rahman and her boss Lieutenant Waqas Seif have to confront their own prejudices as they investigate the guilt of the perpetrators and their victims. Duante was, to some, a street artist with no prior record, but to others, he was a vandal. Mateo was either in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a dangerous drug dealer. In either case, was lethal force truly necessary?

#BloodBetrayal #BlackwaterFalls2 #AusmaZehanatKhan

Detective Inaya Rahman faces her past in this book to investigate two officer involved shootings. This book will have you addictively searching for the truth til the very end. I'm so excited to see where the Commuinty Response Unit will end up next.

Colorado, local-law-enforcement, procedural, multicultural, crime-fiction, thriller, suspense, conspiracy, lawyers, law-enforcement, due-diligence, refugees, immigrants, riveting*****

What happens when a good white cop makes a deadly mistake and shoots a young minority male. Not everything is a cover-up but sometimes things really get out of hand. Denver's PD is trying to make changes for good as evidenced by establishment of a Community Response Unit and the hiring of refugees of several countries experienced in law enforcement. Will it be a beneficial thing in this case. Detective Inaya Rahman and her Lieutenant are positive examples as are several members of their team. The story is intense and quite realistic. I was riveted.
I requested and received an EARC from St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books via NetGalley. Thank you!

A great sophomore effort, Khan's character building is believable and all encompassing. At times the two storylines became a little convoluted and hard to follow but it all came together at the end in a way I wasn't expecting. Looking forward to more in this series and getting to know these characters better.