No Place of Refuge

No Place of Refuge is the fourth novel to feature Canadian detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty of the RCMP’s Community Police.

When NGO worker Audrey Clare disappears from the Greek island of Lesvos her powerful brother, Nathan, is worried, not least because two dead bodies were found in her tent. Asa Khattak and Rachel Getty are sent to Lesvos to investigate.

I can’t say that I enjoyed No Place of Refuge, simply because it is a difficult, harrowing read. I read fiction for entertainment and this is far from entertaining with its graphic descriptions of torture in Syria and the difficulties refugees face during and after their escape. It is informative and draws attention to a crisis which has unfairly slipped from prominence but light reading it ain’t.

Subject matter aside the novel is well written with several twists and a steady stream of reveals. This is the first novel in the series that I have read so I did feel the lack of knowledge of the characters’ backstories. There are summaries along the way but as most of the characters are uneasy in their interactions with the others I feel that I missed the nuances. There is a romance in the novel but it seems out of place given the subject matter and I have no understanding of their qualms and misunderstandings, it all seemed a bit first world to me amid such suffering.

I have awarded this novel 4* because of the light it throws on the Syrian refugee situation. It is a hard, difficult read but I’m glad I took it on.

Another bruising read from Khan who has made the contemporary political environment her own. I'd strongly recommend that her books are read in order as the complicated relationships between the protagonists are carried forward from their shared pasts and add nuance and developments that might be lost on new readers.

What really makes these books outstanding, though, is the way they engage humanely but boldly in our world today: here the plight of refugees, mostly from Syria, takes centre stage, a topic which has led to some of the most brutal and heartless commentary in the world's media and amongst so-called statemen. Khan's background in international law allows her to deal with emotive topics coolly and without recourse to sentimentality, but there's real heart and, sometimes, rightful anger in these books.

So activism, intelligence, rounded characters, and a continued intertwining of the personal and political makes this series stand head and shoulders above many out there.

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 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.