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Jul 05, 2018DANIEL HAMMANG rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
This is a tough novel to pin down. The narrative is a fictional police procedural, noir mystery but the storyline is deeply steeped in the very real horrors of the war/slaughter in Bosnia during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Zehanat Khan rightly wants the story of the tragedy to be more widely known. In this respect she is very effective. You will know much more at the end of the novel, particularly if you read the footnotes that correspond to the quotations at the beginning of each chapter. It is hard to find words for the deep suffering experienced or for the depravity of the inflictors. It is very tough reading. The story itself provides an interesting pair of detectives. As they follow the clues their own learning of the painful sources of suffering that drive the various characters paralleled this reader's own learning. I do have to say that standing alone the denouement is not particularly striking. It is the depth of the rest of the story that makes this a compelling read. The author has chosen wisely for a venue to convey these sad facts.