BOOK REPORT: THE UNQUIET DEAD by AUSMA ZEHANAT KHAN

 

I JUST FINISHED READING FORMER LAW PROFESSOR AND ACADEMIC Ausma Zenhat Khan’s, detective novel, The Unquiet Dead, and while I have reservations around her plotting and character development, other aspects of her story are arresting, compelling and evocative. Using a standard plot line found in most detective novels, Khan introduces us to the Toronto-based detecting duo of Inspector Esa Khattak and his loyal subordinate Detective Rachael Getty who work in the Community Policing Section* of the Toronto police that specializes in investigations dealing with the city’s minority communities. Inspector Khattak, a Muslim—something that will have significance as the story progresses—receives a puzzling phone call from a friend in Ottawa who works for the Immigration Department. His friend asks Esa to investigate the circumstances surrounding the recent death of a rich businessman, Christopher Drayton, who'd fallen from a cliff along the Scarborough Bluffs while out walking a few evenings previously. By all accounts, the death of the retired philanthropist was accidental, no foul play was indicated, but this is a detective story after all, and as Esa and Rachael begin their investigation, a mystery begins to unpack.

    Ausma Zehanat Khan

Through the usual police grunt-work of phone calls, computer searches, forensic analysis (though no autopsy scenes, unfortunately), along with interviews, gum-shoeing and guesswork, the two investigators discover disturbing undercurrents beneath the surface of the elderly Drayton’s life.  A tattoo on the dead man’s hand leads the cerebral and ever-cautious Inspector Khattak to the discovery that Drayton may be an alias when he confirms that the tattoo is a symbol for the dreaded “Drina Corps”, a Serbian militia that rampaged through Bosnian territories, following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Further investigations uncover a cache of cryptic letters in Drayton’s wall safe, addressed to a “Drazen Krstiž” who Esa and Rachael discover was a ringleader behind the mass-murder of thousands of Muslim boys and men, along with mass-rape and ethnic cleansing during the infamous Srebrenica genocide of 1992. The two must decide among a widening circle of possible suspects who had a motive to kill Drayton (who didn’t is more like it!) and to establish conclusive evidence that he was, in fact, the wanted Serbian war criminal. Esa’s Ottawa friend will eventually confirm that “Christopher Drayton” is indeed Krstiž, and hence his reason for reaching out to Esa and his Community Policing unit to handle the politically explosive fallout around how someone guilty of genocide and horrific acts of violence got past Canadian immigration authorities to live for years in monied comfort in a mansion above the Scarborough Bluffs. (The immigration official had received anonymous letters pointing to Drayton/Krstiž but had failed to act on them in a timely fashion, a further complication.)

 

But, for Inspector Kattak and Detective Getty, this means the local Muslim community, which includes several Bosnian refugees, are an additional pool of potential victims as well as suspects, if it turns out that Krstiž was indeed murdered. Also on their list are Krstiž’s fiancé Melanie Blesssant, her ex-husband Tom, their teenaged daughter Hadley, and the beautiful and enigmatic Mink Norman, whose small museum, “Andalusia House” (she privately calls it “Ringsong”) is due to shortly open. Finally, David Newell, a member of the museum’s board of directors, as well as others living and working in the exclusive enclave where “Christopher Drayton” made his home, all come under the detectives’ scrutiny.

 

    Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes

And so, investigations and story lines expand and follow the typical trends of a detective novel. Side trails and character development occur predictably: Esa Kattak, the outsider, seeks to bridge the gap between victims and their right to justice. Rachael, the more impetuous and passionate of the two, follows her instincts and fights to tear down those same walls of injustice. And a whiff of romance is in the air between the two, slowly smouldering! Further backstory is provided. For example, Esa’s strained friendship with the writer, and coincidentally Drayton’s neighbour, Nathan Clare is revealed. (He was my pick as the culprit, which shows you my instincts for detecting!) And Rachael’s dysfunctional family life is examined, among other detours. The story is told primarily through Rachael and Esa’s perspective, and it’s here I find Khan’s writing the weakest—in her fleshing-out of character, their dialogue, and using two-dimensional characters to drive plot or plant red herrings to draw away the reader’s attention before proceeding to the tale’s climax. I call these character types ‘coat-hangers’, created simply to hang your plot on, and they tend to detract from her storytelling.

 

Thus, we have a basic detective story here. So why don’t I just file it under “Read and Done” and leave it at that?

In part, it's because of Khan’s interesting descriptions of the Scarborough Bluffs and Nathan Klare’s home, “Winterglass”, another evocatively named building, whose windows look out over the cliffs. Khan seems comfortable creating scenes involving the built environment, and her descriptions of Mink Norman’s museum is another example. Ringsong** is a building built in tribute to the Andalusian culture of centuries past, with its tranquil courtyards and Moorish gardens re-imagined in the architecture of the Scarborough mansion. References to the Islamic Golden Age (roughly the 8^th to the 14^th centuries), with its connection to Bosnia as a place where its culture, ethos and mosques were on display into contemporary times, are intertwined with one of Khan’s major themes: namely, that justice must be done, and the living must speak for the dead.

Later on, we learn that Mink has built her museum to challenge or act as a counterweight to Krstiž’s house, which is nearby and described as closed-off, secretive, and uninviting. Khan contrasts his home with the open and friendly environment of Klare’s Winterglass and the formal, but esthetically pleasing design of Ringsong. They are neighbours but they are worlds apart. Eventually, we come to learn that the museum is designed to 'sing': “We are here, and you must acknowledge us!” 

 

    Mosque in present-day Bosnia

I won’t give away the final layers of the story, but I will point out two additional reasons for reading Khan’s novel:      

One is her technique of inserting throughout the story quotes from the cache of letters Esa and Rachel found in Krstiž’s safe. Sometimes they are in the form of questions or statements of fact, phrases, pleas, curses or prayers. The author or authors are unknown, as is sender of the letters. As the course of the novel progresses and the Serbian militia leader’s past deeds become clearer, the anonymous quotations take on a grimmer and more horrific significance. We learn they are words from the dead of Srebrenica recorded as witness statements and first-hand accounts. They were sent to Krstiž to haunt him. And in the end, they haunt him to death.

After we learn, or think we learn, what happened that night on the cliffs above the Scarborough Bluffs, Esa conducts one final interview to confirm his worst suspicions. The answers he receives leave him emotionally drained. As a Muslim and as someone who works to bridge the divides between people, they are a blow to his core beliefs. His investigations have wounded him psychically and spiritually, and by the end of the novel he stands "in the shadow of the mosque", where he can no longer find there any "consolation." (366)

As to whether or not arrests are made, I refer the reader to the Agatha Christie novel that Rachael references in the closing chapters, Murder on the Orient Express, to guide them.

 

A second reason for reading Khan’s The Unquiet Dead are her helpful “Author’s Note”, “Notes”, and “Acknowledgements” sections at the end. They underscore her strengths as a researcher and provide a compelling and heartfelt rationale for all of us to remember the past, lest we be compelled to repeat it over and over. Remember Srebrenica!

 

Cheers, Jake.

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*Meaning, among other things, they don’t carry guns, which makes this a “soft-boiled” detective thriller—one that comes without a single shoot-out or car-chase scene, I’m afraid.

 

**In her comprehensive “Afterword”, Khan references the 13^th Century Andalusian Muslim scholar Ibn Arabi. Arabi was a Sufi mystic who wrote numerous treatises and philosophical works including his “Ringstones of Wisdom” collection. He was a Sunni Muslim whose writings were also popular with Shia (the two main branches of Islam), perhaps suggesting they stressed inclusivity and bridging divides, rather than widening them. He died in 1240.

Mink’s museum, her Ringsong, despite her dark and wounded personality, expressed a catholic sensibility (and by this, I mean a broad-based sense of community and welcome) and was a place of beauty and healing for Esa and others who visited it. 

 

--I wouldn’t have thought it, but minks can be rather predatory animals! Under their fur, there’s much to be wary about. Likewise with Mink herself.  

 

 [Here is the music that was played by the "Cellist of Sarajevo" during the siege of the city. And here is the composition by David Wilde written in honour of this brave musician who risked his life to bring music to the beseiged city's citizens. It is played by Yo Yo Ma.

 

Khan, Zehanat, Ausma. The Unquiet Dead. Minotaur Books, New York. 2014

 

    

    Memorial graveyard at Srebrenica