This is the latest in Ausma Zehanat Khan's exceptional and thought provoking crime series set in Toronto, Canada, featuring the community policing detectives, the Muslim Esa Khattak and the Jewish Rachel Getty. This addition so often reads less like fiction and more like the terrors of our real life contemporary world and is indeed inspired by actual events. When a horrifying mass shooting takes place at a mosque in the small town of Saint-Isidore-du-Lac in Quebec, Esa and Rachel are dispatched

I have enjoyed Zehanat Khan’s previous books. They are part of a mystery series set in Canada, and they typically deal with recent events and contemporary issues. The last one involved a mystery amidst Canadian relief workers working with Syrian refugees in Greece. In this case, the mystery is centered on a shooting in a mosque in a small town in Quebec just outside of Ottawa. With this setting, the author again takes on some important and complicated issues. Her afterword is brilliant, reflecti...

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5A Deadly Divide by Ausma Zehanat Khan has a mystery, some romance, plus speaks to hate in our nation. There are a lot of heavy themes in this book, but it was incredibly enlightening for someone that doesn't know too much about what is happening in Canada.What it's about: There has been a shooting at a mosque in Quebec and partners Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty are called in to help solve the case. A priest is found with a gun and is let go, while a young Muslim man that is helping th...

I'm a sucker for this series.

very good! khan continues to deliver timely stories of real-world traumas and cultural prejudices. her latest book offers a nuanced fictionalization of the 2017 québec city mosque shooting. i did find the flow of a deadly divide to be a little awkward as khan navigated three overlapping investigations, but that is my only (small) criticism. the personal lives of getty & khattak are becoming stronger presences as the series progresses. that development didn't work too well for me in the previous

4.5 rounded up to 5 stars. The "loss" of 0.5 stars is that there were times when I lost track of some of the characters so that when the mastermind was revealed, I had to remind myself where that character fit in the storyline. There are books where you can say "Ripped from the headlines" and that is an apt description of this central plot of this book. I love this series.

Not only do I consider this series, featuring a Muslim officer and his young partner, a smartly written series, but the storylines are so relevant. The characters are wonderfully portrayed, and I always find them so powerful. Community police, this pair is usually based in Toronto, however, a shooting at a mosque will find them traveling to Quebec. Here they will confront racism and bigotry from many different quarters. The shooter still at large, the danger is pervasive. Who can be trusted?Khan...

A Deadly Divide feels like the most timely book yet in Khan’s Khattak and Getty series. It faces squarely the identity politics that have been roiling through Europe and North America especially in recent years.Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty are called to a small town in Quebec after a shooting at the local mosque leaves many dead and injured, a young Muslim man in custody, while a priest found at the scene holding a gun is released. They are present under their Community Policing mandate with app...

Senseless.When he confessed to killing six people and injured nineteen others in an attack on a Quebec City mosque in 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette said: “I do not know how I committed such a senseless act.”Yet Bissonnette, as Ausma Zehanat Khan points out in her Author’s Note in A Deadly Divide, was not charged as a terrorist. It would have too big a prosecutorial challenge to prove terrorist intentions or connections to terrorist organization. So why not just secure the conviction and lock up th...

A timely and intriguing crime thriller that really made me think 💭 Ausma Zehanat Khan has taken today’s important issues pushed them to the forefront of this mystery and did not hold any punches... hate is so ugly and so uncomfortable and there were so many parts of this book that were just that, uncomfortable and ugly.... this is the fifth book in this series set in Canada, but the first book I have read from the series, it worked perfectly fine as a standalone.... I found the political issues

When an author sets really high standards right from the start of a series, I often wonder if they will manage to keep such a quality and balance in the long term. This fear never reaches my mind when I pick a book by Ausma Zehanat Khan.Since The Unquiet Dead and the creation of Rachel Getty and Esa Khattack, her writing has never failed me. Neither has the accuracy and amount of research involved in all her storylines. A Deadly Divide is another hot and dangerous rollercoaster of action and emo...

Having binged all novels (and a short story) in the series to date, I can assert that Ausma Zehanat Khan seeks not only to tell a story to the reader, but to impact them with her powerful narrative and poignant topics. While the issues likely occur all over the world, Khan debunks the ‘Canada is a peaceful place of love and harmony’ with these novels, using her knowledge of Islam and through the genre of police procedurals. After a shooting at a mosque in a small Quebec town, Community Policing

Here I go, jumping into a series late in the game.Oh, friends, it did not matter. Rachel Getty and Esa Khattack have such good detective chemistry, I bought into the storyline instantly. There’s been a mass shooting of twelve people at a Quebec mosque. Immediately things go awry when the police release Etienne Roy, a priest who had a weapon on him, and then arrest Amadou Duchon, a Muslim man who had been present helping those hurt during the shooting. At first glance, it seems like the shooting

Another topical and emotive entry in this outstanding series which uses a crime novel format to tackle head-on big contemporary political issues: here Islamaphobia, the rise of far-right white supremacist groups, and a horrific massacre in a Canadian mosque. Yet, somehow, for once the story feels plodding, and the denouement is unconvincing. Maybe moving Rachel and Khattak from their home ground strips the story of the personal interests which have been developing across the series; maybe the st...

I’ve attempted to read this book multiple times but it was simply too Islamophobic for me to be able to continue reading. After reading the blurb on A Deadly Divide I thought this book could have some good social commentary about the heartbreaking hatred towards Muslims and have a good moral to the story but instead I was left heartsick and saddened until I just couldn’t read any further.

This is a powerful police procedural/ thriller, but much more than that. It explores social and cultural beliefs and the tensions which arise which may provoke violence. Published in February 2019, it predates the Government of the Province of Quebec passing the controversial Bill 21 in June 2019. This law prevents public school teachers, police officers, government lawyers, judges and others employed by the provincial government from wearing religious symbols while at work. The Montreal public...

Of all the Khattak and Getty novels so far I think this one is either the best one or simply my favourite, being as it is a coming together of all the themes in previous stories and a throwing at the reading audience a hugely relatable event…A mass shooting in a community already on the brink, Ausma Zehanat Khan shines a scarily relevant spotlight onto the world in which we currently live. Using sharp insightful writing, a keen eye for character and a disturbingly realistic outlook, this will gr...

When Allison Ziegler at Minotaur Books messaged me to offer an ARC of Ausma Zehanat Khan's next Esa Khattak/Rachel Getty mystery, I nearly lost my mind. I already had my digital and print copies pre-ordered, but a chance to get my hands on my favorite author's book early? Yes, please!
As promised, I dropped everything else I was reading and started this one. The prime case that brings our detectives together is a shooting at a mosque in a small town in Quebec. Twelve people are viciously gunned

Mystery writer Ausma Zehanat Khan has been navigating the difficult path of Muslims in the West through her Esa Khattak/Rachel Getty series. Each volume deals with cases taking place in different types of Muslim communities and the issues they face. The fifth novel, which is the subject of this review, is A Deadly Divide set in a small town in Quebec. I was provided with a digital copy free of charge from the publisher via Net Galley.In Ausma Zehanat Khan's Quebec the French speaking Catholic co...

This was my first encounter with Detective Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty. The situation – a small Quebecois community – grabbed me straight away, as did the set up: the aftermath of a mass shooting in a mosque. A tough subject to deal with delicately, but the author presents it with a serious-minded mix of appalled revulsion and open-minded determination. She then tackles the tricky subject of radicalisation – of young white males by fascist influences – set against the background of long term te...