Blackwater Falls and Blood Betrayal

Khan, Ausma Zehanat. Blackwater Falls. New York : Minotaur Books, 2022.

Khan, Ausma Zehanat. Blood Betrayal. New York : Minotaur Books, 2023.

I really love a mystery series that really captures a place and a moment, and the Blackwater Falls series does that well.

Inaya Rahman is a police officer with the Denver Police Community Response Unit. Their goal is to improve policing in areas with high immigrant and/or low-income populations in the greater Denver area. Right now, they are in Blackwater Falls, where immigrant girls have been disappearing and the sheriff can’t seem to be bothered to do anything about it. Inaya and her coworkers are pulled in when a Muslim girl is posed and hung on the doors of the local mosque.

Inaya has a complicated relationship with her supervisor, Lieutenant Waqas Seif, which adds to the tension of this story. Qas is raising his two brothers, both of whom are more devout than he is and who question his past dating history of non-Muslim women. Inaya left one police force because of bullying and religious harassment from fellow officers, and has chosen, for now, to forgo the hijab. This is a complicated decision for her – can she still consider herself devout without the hijab? She doesn’t know why Qas seems to be harder on her than her coworkers, and she tries not to care when he seems to kowtow to the sheriff instead of doing his job.

The mystery is great, but what really shines in this series is the struggle in Blackwater Falls between immigrants and newcomers and those who have lived there all of their lives. This plays out in communities all over our country, including Alamance County.

If community policing, race relations, small town frictions and murder sound like the perfect ingredients for a great book, give Blackwater Falls and Blood Betrayal a try!

Mary Beth A. is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries.