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| The Thread's Must Read | 
“The Unquiet Dead” by Ausma Khan
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Last week, I recommended spending some quality reading time with Capetown, South Africa, Detective Mat Joubert.
This week? Another enigmatic, heartbroken detective who will, nonetheless, rise to the challenge of solving his case.
We find Inspector Esa Khattak — Pakistani-born, Canadian-trained — in Toronto as he is interrupted in the midst of his evening prayer by a phone call. It’s a noted historian on the line, calling to suggest that the death of a wealthy philanthropist may not be the accident it appears. Indeed, even the identity of said philanthropist may not be as it appears.
Debut author Ausma Zehenat Khan, who has a PhD in international human rights, takes the concept of identity and turns it around and around to see it from different angles.
There is her lead character, Khattak, one of the few Muslim officers on the Toronto force, and a man who knows exactly what that means: “If he performed well,” the character acknowledges, “then greater glory to the city, province and nation. If he ran into barriers from within the community as he pursued his co-religionists — no one could accuse [the force] of bias. Everyone’s hands were clean.”
Khattak is joined by his partner, Rachel Getty, who followed her violent, damaged father into law enforcement. She will vanquish the harm her father has caused by being the kind of police officer he never was.
And, there’s the central mystery in Khan’s plot: What if a war criminal escapes justice by shedding his name and his past? And what if what appears to be retribution is finally delivered — by the hand of someone who acts on behalf of the victims? Is that justice?
-Kerri Miller |
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 | | Can a chicken recipe change your life? | "Midnight Chicken: & Other Recipes Worth Living For" by Ella Risbridger |
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Ella Risbridger was suicidally depressed when she roasted a chicken and ended up writing an uplifting, genre-bending cookbook that reads like a magical mix of memoir, novel and self-help book.
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