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Kausar Khan hasn’t been back to Toronto for years, preferring to avoid a place where she experienced a heartbreaking loss. But now she must leave her cozy home in a smaller town a few hours away to visit the city: her daughter has phoned to say she’s the suspect in a murder.
With the encouragement of a good friend who knows well Kausar’s skills at noticing details, Kausar decides she must investigate this murder. She knows the perpetrator can’t be Sana, though her daughter had plenty of motive to kill the victim. But plenty of other people had motive as well. The deceased was the unpopular landlord of a strip mall where Sana had a boutique clothing shop.
Even though Kausar has done a hard thing returning to Toronto, her daughter is cagey about telling her the full story of what happened. In addition to being frustrated by Sana’s hiding details surrounding the murder, Kausar is feeling unsettled by her daughter’s personal life. Staying in her grand home with Sana’s busy husband and two daughters, Kausar is noticing things are off. She doesn’t know quite what yet, but she’ll find out.
Kausar gets help from old friends and even her sometimes-prickly teen granddaughter as she observes and questions as many people as she can. But as she gathers information, even she almost wonders if Sana is guilty. So many things point to her. The stakes are high and Kausar must use all skills and options open to her to save her family.
It took me a while to really get into Detective Aunty. I considered several times just DNF’ing. But I stayed with it and found that I enjoyed it more just as Kausar’s story, rather than a mystery. Kausar is middle-aged but not old; she’d been widowed not long before this story began, and she’d lost a child. She’d walled herself off from life in some ways to protect her heart. But as the book progresses, she allows herself to open up a little.
I also enjoyed the window into her culture. Kausar is a Muslim Indian-Canadian, and those identifiers are a huge part of the story. Muslim beliefs and practices are woven into the plot and writing, as are plenty of inclusions of food (the proper way to prepare a chai is frequently mentioned!). I settled in and just allowed myself to go with the flow. The resolution of the mystery was perfectly fine, but I really did enjoy Detective Aunty more holistically. I didn’t love it, though, so I’m not really likely to read more installments.
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes a few instances of moderate profanity, a couple of uses of mild language, and a couple of instances of the name of Deity in vain. A murder takes place, with a knife, and some mentions a few times of blood. But there are no other gory details. Sexual content just includes some mentions of extramarital affairs. There are insinuations of men hanging around teen girls and being a potential threat.
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