Ausma Zehanat Khan: Blood Betrayal
Detective Inaya Rahman #2
The second novel in Ausma Khan’s Detective Inaya Rahman series is as powerful and moving as the first, Blackwater Falls. I think police novels are at a tough point at the moment because of recent, tragic events involving police violence. Khan looks at policing from a different angle, approaching her novel from the point of view of a Muslim detective who works for Denver’s CRU, or Community Response Unit. The CRU takes on cases that are racially sensitive, and in both this novel and the first, the action is centered in Blackwater Falls, an idlyllic (seeming) town just outside of Denver.