Library Limelights 314

 

Ausma Zehanat Khan. Blackwater Falls. USA: Minotaur Books, 2022.

Here's the deal. I began reading this as an e-book; due to reading overload it was set aside, then resumed as a print book. Page numbers, below, indicate which edition. This is my third attempt to write about this book. Why so difficult, I ask myself. Can I answer that? I really really tried to appreciate the context but it was strangely non-compelling for me. Almost every character is loaded with identity baggage that I found distracting (parentheses indicate a person's cultural heritage or religion). And there are many characters, as if the author needs to over-emphasize inclusiveness.

Detective Inaya Rahman is a Denver cop (Afghan/Pakistani), a Muslim faithful in spirit and secular at work. Blackwater Falls ‒ where she happens to live ‒ is a small outlying town where many recent immigrants are settling, thanks to jobs at nearby manufacturing plants. Racist and religious elements are spurring growing complaints and problems to authorities. When a shocking murder is discovered early one morning, Inaya is appointed lead detective under the eye of her gruff boss, Wagas Seif (Iranian). The victim, Razan (Syrian), had disappeared four days earlier, as had two other girls (Somali). Razan's father and others had been lobbying to form a union at the meat-processing plant.

Powerful local Sheriff Grant resents Seif and his police team for superceding his own authority in this case. Inaya and her colleague Catalina (Mexican Catholic) conduct interviews that provide theoretical suspects and provoke members of privileged white society—plant managers, school teachers, the church pastor, even the church's biker gang, besides families of the missing young women. Activist Areesha (African) is one voice that tries to diffuse confrontations and address injustices. Into the mix come secret FBI agents, hate incidents, informants, brainwashed evangelists, and a range of references from Middle East cultures to Slavic Christianity, Japanese and Chinese surnames, a friendly Lebanese baker, and so on.

The diversified cast may be a laudatory "woke" concept but it's overcrowded here IMO. Small gaps in information for the reader had me perplexed. It's hard enough keeping track of a multitude of characters, without knowing a bit more of who had done what to whom. A few key figures seem no more than stereotypical. Inaya and Seif are the most fully formed, as befits the first novel of a proposed series. But numerous threads and suspects scrambled my brain to blur the effect of the conclusion. If Blackwater Falls is representative of some small towns today, is America's once proud label of "melting pot" gone with the winds? Nonetheless, this talented author is undoubtedly on an upward streak.

    E-BOOK Bits

▪ "Can't handle this on your own?" He clucked his tongue. "Seif said you could." (25)

▪ "You're in the wrong game, lady." Areesha's observation held no malice. (37)

▪ "The sheriff is going to skin your carcass and leave you out to dry." (38)

▪ " ... the hate we feel in this community trickles down from the church." (39)

▪ "That's what this killing is ‒ not a crucifixion ‒ a veneration." (44)

▪ "Joint Terrorist Task Force," Ranger clarified. (126)

▪ "Pakistani chai for my darling girl, and Mexican café for my daughter, yes?" (150)

▪ "The murder is far too deliberate to be random. There had to be a precipitating event." (178)

    PRINT quotes

One-liners

▪ The murder could still be a hate crime, yet to kill a girl and clothe her like the Virgin didn't seem like hate. (188)

▪ "When Razan first came on board here, did she know the nature of the work you do"? (206)

▪ "We are not an arms and munitions company; we're not at war with anyone," Wong said through gritted teeth, her whole attention on Cat. (207)

▪ "There is such a thing as overpolicing, one might even say targeted policing." (223)

▪ "No employer in Blackwater can afford to be targeted by one of Pastor Wayne's sermons." (256)

▪ "You've had Razan's knapsack all this time?" (338)

Multi-liners

▪ "This is the Virgin Orans. It's a mosaic located in the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv." (186)

▪ "Perhaps you could tell us a little about the work Razan did for you. I understand she excelled in math and physics, and that this internship was prestigious." (197)

▪ "Two unsolved disappearances and one teenage murder victim don't engender a lot of trust." She turned to Seif. "Why are you allowing this? Does the sheriff have something on you?" (227)

▪ She knew all about Pincher. He wasn't Grant's assistant, he was the power behind the throne, methodically plotting the sheriff's rise and the expansion of his influence. (238)

▪ "If you attack the beliefs of this great nation, if you invade, we won't stand by and take it! When you strike at America, America strikes back!" (281)

▪ "The girl was a pain in my ass," he said frankly. "What with her articles against the church, accusing us of 'Islamophobia,' a made-up case of victimization if I ever heard one." (289)

▪ Something in Seif called to her. His history, his expressive dark eyes, the struggle she read in his face. That rush of feeling when he looked at her and she thought, I know him, he's one of ours. (336)

Victor Methos. A Killer's Wife. USA: Thomas & Mercer, 2020.

I was so intrigued by Methos' definitive characterizations and legal twists in A Gambler's Jury (LL 254), his next book was on my list. Eddie Cal has run out of appeals on his serial murder charges and awaits an execution date. His ex-wife, now a federal prosecutor, Jessica Yardley is called upon by the FBI to assist in locating a copycat killer, who is emulating Cal's method of stabbing random, innocent couples to death in their beds. Cason Baldwin and Oscar Ortiz are the federal agents in charge of this new case, thinking Cal could possibly help with this; they know he won't talk to them, but maybe he would to Yardley. And so she finds herself re-visiting the nightmare of learning that her then-husband had perfectly masked his true psychopathic self during their marriage. But Yardley has been steeled by the experience, her priority to keep teenage daughter Tara safe from his influence.

Your credibility is tested by the daring twist the author pulls; it's not too long before the copycat murderer is caught. Yardley gains evidence they need in a reluctant trade-off with her imprisoned ex-husband. Courtroom battles shape up between the prosecution and the accused—a highly educated lawyer representing himself. Intellectually, Yardley is his match but technical points do not allow her to be the prosecutor; her colleague Tim Jeffries is failing miserably at prosecution. Daughter drama is a distraction, Tara's boredom at school prompting unwise moves, but at least Yardley's domestic partner Wesley has been supportive—until he isn't. Will the killer prevail in court and go free, only to take revenge on Yardley and Tara? Perfectly paced, almost unbearable suspense. Trust me, Methos has another winner.

One-liners

▪ Law enforcement was a machismo patriarchy; she had fought her entire career as a federal prosecutor to make sure none of them ever saw a hint of weakness. (10)

▪ Tara had inherited her father's intelligence: Eddie Cal had an IQ of 175. (15)

▪ People rarely understood that technology, not sleuthing, was responsible for most arrests, so when an officer had a laptop in his cruiser that was fifteen years out of date, he was not going to make the kind of connections he could with a new one linked to every law enforcement agency database in the country. (51)

▪ "I'm asking you to tear open a wound you just barely got to heal." (57)

▪ It feels like just a second ago she was throwing her arms around me and telling me she loves me, and now she can't stand the sight of me." (82)

▪ "There's been another attack." (164)

▪ "He's making your witnesses look like idiots, Tim." (294)

▪ "I am also dismissing this case in the interests of justice for gross misconduct by the prosecution." (298)

Multi-liners

▪ Law enforcement was a gun culture, and the type of gun you carried spoke about you. A large .45 was his way of telling them, Mine is bigger than yours. (34)

▪ Yardley watched her brilliant, troubled daughter shut the door to her bedroom. Did Tara understand she had a choice in who she became? (48)

▪ She stepped closer to Kevin. "You come into my house high, and into my daughter's bedroom without me home?" (80)

▪ "I didn't do anything. They think I killed four people." (129)

▪ "I don't want you working this case anymore. I'm asking you as your partner to give it to someone else." (166)

▪ "It's important for him that they open the door to see the carnage in a single moment. It amplifies the pain." (174)

▪ Tim said, "Jessica, save the drama. I've never lost a case in this office in over fifteen years." (240)