Member Review

What a great start to a new detective/mystery series! The setting is the Denver, Colorado area, specifically a town named Blackwater Falls. There is a large immigrant/refugee population there, specifically a lot of Muslim newcomers, from Somalia and elsewhere, and that has exacerbated racial and religious tensions in the area, which is dominated by an evangelical Christian megachurch. Enter a squad from the Denver Police Department called the Community Response Unit. They have been instructed to take over an investigation from the local Blackwater Falls sheriff, who has had a lot of community complaints. To add to the tension, we have a female Muslim police officer with this CRU. So on top of all the other issues creating tension, we add misogyny.

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. 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.

The story is heartbreaking is so many ways. A young Muslim Syrian refugee has been murdered and has been found “posed” in a very unusual way. There were a lot of twists and turns that kept both me and my husband guessing, as we listened to the audiobook on a long car ride. (I also had a copy of the ebook and consulted it in the evenings to make sure I hadn’t missed anything while we were listening - due to traffic, distractions, etc. - which also helped me with the spelling of a lot of the names involved. Grant and Brandt, for instance, sounds a lot alike!) The author included a lot of information on the cultural and religious practices of Muslims, as practiced by families from Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan or Pakistan, and we enjoyed the occasional use of an Arabic word or phrase, feeling that it added to the authenticity of the story. And the food descriptions made our mouths water!

Something that never got resolved in our minds involved Inaya’s family: we were confused as to why they lived in the area and were seemingly immersed in the community, as the story kept emphasizing that Inaya was new to the area. Did they follow her from Chicago to Denver? Maybe we missed something! The other thing that bothered us was the feeling that a recent immigrant like Razan would never have been granted a fellowship at such a company dealing with such security-sensitive programs. One of our sons had a similar internship while in college and he had to jump through a lot of security hoops just to be able to set foot in the place, so that whole setup seemed very unlikely to us.

While we still had these questions at the end of the book, overall it was a really good story and I am looking forward to more books in this series.

Warnings: The book espouses a particular point of view (politically speaking), so this may annoy some readers, as well as parts that can be construed as anti-evangelicalism. In addition, there is racism, misogyny, anti-immigrant sentiment/xenophobia, police brutality, etc.

The audiobook was narrated beautifully by Fareeda Pasha.

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.