No Place of Refuge

 By: Ausma Khan

Location: FIC KHA

Genre:  Mystery, Crime, Refugees

The author Khan has a PhD in international law and her background provides the experience and knowledge of the context she writes about in this novel.

From the full review below...

This is not an easy read, but it is an important one, a much needed informative novel that explores and depicts one of the most problematic and intractable issues of our age, the plight of refugees. It is heartbreaking in its simultaneous picture of the inhumanity of people juxtaposed with the humanity of those trying to do good

Amid a global crisis, one woman searches for justice…

The Syrian refugee crisis just became personal for Inspector Esa Khattak and Sergeant Rachel Getty.

NGO worker Audrey Clare, sister of Khattak’s childhood friend, is missing. In her wake, a French Interpol Agent and a young Syrian man are found dead at the Greek refugee camp where she worked. Khattak and Getty travel to Greece to trace Audrey’s last movements in a desperate attempt to find her. In doing so, they learn that her work in Greece had strayed well beyond the remit of her NGO…

Had Audrey been on the edge of exposing a dangerous secret at the heart of the refugee crisis – one that ultimately put a target on her own back?

No Place of Refuge is a highly topical, moving mystery in which Khan sensitively exposes the very worst and best of humanity. Fans of the series will love this latest instalment.

Review by Parojit

This is my first read of this series featuring Inspector Esa Khattak and Sergeant Rachel Getty, RMCP community policing partners in Toronto. This is a intelligent, considered and such a moving addition, so impressively researched from an author with expertise in Human Rights Law, which she uses remarkably effectively in this emotionally harrowing book on the complexities and horrors of the Global Refugee Crisis, the terrors of the Syrian War, and the flood of fleeing refugees it created. Nathan Clare, a friend of Esa's, has a sister, Audrey, a NGO at a migrant refugee camp on the Greek Island of Lesvos who has gone missing, and a French Interpol Agent and a young Syrian man have been discovered dead. Nathan is a powerful man with the ability to influence the Canadian PM, that results in Esa and Rachel travelling to the Mediterranean for Lesvos, to find out what happened to Audrey.

What they find is an unimaginable nightmare, a squalid and abysmal camp, a harrowing and disturbing picture of homeless, destitute, and vulnerable refugees facing starvation, despair, violence, and criminals who prey on and exploit them in a climate of implacable opposition to migrants, racism and religious intolerance. It is barely surprising that the refugees are distrustful as Esa and Rachel try to find out where Audrey might be, does she have dangerous knowledge that caused her to flee? Esa is a middle aged moderate Muslim with a modern outlook, and the Jewish Rachel has a traumatic past, and the pair have a close working relationship in this dark, intense and tense mystery as the many threads slowly begin to connect.

This is not an easy read, but it is an important one, a much needed informative novel that explores and depicts one of the most problematic and intractable issues of our age, the plight of refugees. It is heartbreaking in its simultaneous picture of the inhumanity of people juxtaposed with the humanity of those trying to do good. Khan writes with compassion, in a narrative that is infused with hope amidst the gut wrenching horrors and tragedies visited on refugees, the desperate state of Syria under Assad, the rise of Fortress Europe, whilst the humanitarian agencies struggle to cope with the ever growing crisis. This is not a read without flaws, for instance, I was irritated with the romantic elements that felt they had little place in the story, but the pertinent social and political commentary it provides makes it a must read, a novel which gives the reader an invaluable opportunity to learn about the grim realities of our world today. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Oldcastle Books for an ARC.