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A review by frasersimons
A Dangerous Crossing by Ausma Zehanat Khan
4.0
This series is always super solid for me. Khan has the knowledge and the craft to put very complex relationship and cultural frameworks into an enjoyable and well paced thriller. What’s more is that they are also very accessible to the average reader too.
If you aren’t familiar with the series, this is based in Canada, centered on a fictional division of the Toronto police department (I believe? It might be a provincial thing) that is called Community Policing. Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak head this division. They’re partners and they plot always centres on them, though there are returning side characters with plot interactions and complex, overarching B plots that are in there and handled well. Particularly in this book, a few of those really come to a head and it’s really satisfying to see those threads in play.
Esa is a Muslim man who is in a leadership position and has the credentials to pioneer this pilot program. Which, just in of itself is interesting, a subversion of genre elements, and a good idea that police might want to actually damn well do. He knows how to interact with immigrants and people of different backgrounds and has the necessary life experience to communicate effectively. Another groundbreaking subversion of Esa is that he is flawed but not in the traditional Muslim portrayal. He is kind, generous, easily taken advantage sometimes; just soft and considerate and not in the least a stereotype. Also he is always portrayed as a viable and desirable person in general. He is a extremely good looking person and that doesn’t happen much in our media. It’s also subversive. He is great! He still makes mistakes and his past causes him to react in ways he doesn’t fully understand, he’s got complex dynamics with every relationship established.
Rachel is similarly dogged with a traumatic past and is sort of the training wheels officer attached to Esa. She is somewhat subversive herself. She’s athletic and behaves like an athlete in all scenes. She eats a lot and often. She is also thoughtful and considerate and a bit of a doormat, so her and Esa have a similar blind spot, which I just like a lot because generally writers go for very different flaws; partners are polarizing individuals most of the time. Fire and water, oil and water, shit like that. Not so here, and again, it’s refreshing.
They’re fallible and interesting. And then the actual plot is well constructed and compelling in of itself. But there is always an additional layer of different political and cultural things going on. In this one, it’s the Syrian refugee crisis. Throughout the story you also learn about what that is through numerous POVs and dispels common misconceptions about it that Canadians have. It humanizes foreign elements to most people. It is so smart and well done.
Then, at the end of it, there is always the authors notes on the particular thing she talked about in that book AND suggested reading!
The only reason this isn’t a 5 star for me is that in her quest to be accessible, her first person narration, and dialogue in particular, tends to be natural—but overwritten. It can be a bit hold your hand in a expository way with the relationships in a way it doesn’t need to be. She both shows and tells quite often. It does hamper enjoyment and drags scenes sometimes.
And I feel a bit bad about it hurting my enjoyment somewhat even because I can see what she is doing: Some people probably will need the extra help in the character interactions and Khan likes to make every nuance of what’s happened between characters extremely clear. I feel like she infers it strongly enough that it’s not needed. But I could see her publisher even maybe insisting on this kind of overwriting to be honest, if only because there is such heavy subject matter and the handling of immigrant stories and, essentially putting a human interest piece in with the plot. I don’t know; that’s just my guess.
Anyway. You should be reading this series. We don’t often get A) Canadian police procedural thrillers from the lens of someone so (over) qualified to write them, and B) they’re subversive, well constructed, and legitimately informative reads.
If you aren’t familiar with the series, this is based in Canada, centered on a fictional division of the Toronto police department (I believe? It might be a provincial thing) that is called Community Policing. Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak head this division. They’re partners and they plot always centres on them, though there are returning side characters with plot interactions and complex, overarching B plots that are in there and handled well. Particularly in this book, a few of those really come to a head and it’s really satisfying to see those threads in play.
Esa is a Muslim man who is in a leadership position and has the credentials to pioneer this pilot program. Which, just in of itself is interesting, a subversion of genre elements, and a good idea that police might want to actually damn well do. He knows how to interact with immigrants and people of different backgrounds and has the necessary life experience to communicate effectively. Another groundbreaking subversion of Esa is that he is flawed but not in the traditional Muslim portrayal. He is kind, generous, easily taken advantage sometimes; just soft and considerate and not in the least a stereotype. Also he is always portrayed as a viable and desirable person in general. He is a extremely good looking person and that doesn’t happen much in our media. It’s also subversive. He is great! He still makes mistakes and his past causes him to react in ways he doesn’t fully understand, he’s got complex dynamics with every relationship established.
Rachel is similarly dogged with a traumatic past and is sort of the training wheels officer attached to Esa. She is somewhat subversive herself. She’s athletic and behaves like an athlete in all scenes. She eats a lot and often. She is also thoughtful and considerate and a bit of a doormat, so her and Esa have a similar blind spot, which I just like a lot because generally writers go for very different flaws; partners are polarizing individuals most of the time. Fire and water, oil and water, shit like that. Not so here, and again, it’s refreshing.
They’re fallible and interesting. And then the actual plot is well constructed and compelling in of itself. But there is always an additional layer of different political and cultural things going on. In this one, it’s the Syrian refugee crisis. Throughout the story you also learn about what that is through numerous POVs and dispels common misconceptions about it that Canadians have. It humanizes foreign elements to most people. It is so smart and well done.
Then, at the end of it, there is always the authors notes on the particular thing she talked about in that book AND suggested reading!
The only reason this isn’t a 5 star for me is that in her quest to be accessible, her first person narration, and dialogue in particular, tends to be natural—but overwritten. It can be a bit hold your hand in a expository way with the relationships in a way it doesn’t need to be. She both shows and tells quite often. It does hamper enjoyment and drags scenes sometimes.
And I feel a bit bad about it hurting my enjoyment somewhat even because I can see what she is doing: Some people probably will need the extra help in the character interactions and Khan likes to make every nuance of what’s happened between characters extremely clear. I feel like she infers it strongly enough that it’s not needed. But I could see her publisher even maybe insisting on this kind of overwriting to be honest, if only because there is such heavy subject matter and the handling of immigrant stories and, essentially putting a human interest piece in with the plot. I don’t know; that’s just my guess.
Anyway. You should be reading this series. We don’t often get A) Canadian police procedural thrillers from the lens of someone so (over) qualified to write them, and B) they’re subversive, well constructed, and legitimately informative reads.