A Rip Through Time
Kelley Armstrong
May 31, 2022
Minotaur Books
Blurb: MAY 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory Atkinson is in Edinburgh to be with her dying grandmother. While out on a jog one evening, Mallory hears a woman in distress. She’s drawn to an alley, where she is attacked and loses consciousness.
MAY 20, 1869: Housemaid Catriona Mitchell had been enjoying a half day off, only to be discovered that night strangled and left for dead . . . exactly one hundred and fifty years before Mallory is strangled in the same spot.
When Mallory wakes up in Catriona’s body in 1869, she must put aside her shock and adjust quickly to her new reality: life as a housemaid to an undertaker in Victorian Scotland. She soon discovers that her boss, Dr. Gray, also moonlights as a medical examiner and has just taken on an intriguing case, the strangulation of a young man, similar to the attack on herself. Her only hope is that catching the murderer can lead her back to her modern life . . . before it’s too late.
Purchase Links:
Amazon | Shop your local indie bookstore
As a book blogger, sometimes you feel (or I feel) obligated to finish reading a book even though you think you’d much rather pound your head on a blue pearl granite countertop until you find complete senselessness. The only great thing that happens after that is that you (or I) get to read two wonderful authors (Stephen King, see my Gwendy review, and now Kelley Armstrong) in succession who remind me (you 😉 ) that book blogging is really a great thing.
In this new series by Kelley Armstrong, Mallory Atkinson, a Vancouver police detective, is in Edinburgh, Scotland to be with her beloved grandmother who is dying. When she goes out for a jog, she hears a noise and believing that someone is in distress, unwittingly almost becomes the victim of a murder. However, a rift in the seam (my words) throws her back 150 years as a young housemaid, Catriona Mitchell, is being assaulted in the same alleyway and Mallory changes bodies with Catriona in A Rip Through Time.
How much did I love this book? Let me count the ways, or rather nights that I stayed up far too late reading. As usual, Armstrong’s writing flows and the novel is well-paced without any boring parts, at least for this reader.
The characters of Gray, the funeral director/body examiner, and his older sister, Isla, who longs to be more in a male-dominated world but must settle for doing chemistry as a hobby, are well-drawn. Gray’s choice of profession as well as his brown skin have made him almost an outsider while Isla’s superior brain power sometimes makes her feel like an outsider.
I enjoyed the character of Mallory who is attempting to be the best Catriona she can be although she comes to find out that Catriona is not a very nice person. This fact makes her wonder if Catriona has become her in present times and what exactly this person might be doing to or with Mallory’s family. I have to admit that I wonder too and would love glimpses as to how Catriona is getting along in modern day Edinburgh.
The mystery is well-plotted and the reader is there every step of the way with Mallory. Armstrong has penned enough mysteries that she knows how to keep the reader swishing the pages.
I found A Rip Through Time to be thoroughly enjoyable and am eagerly awaiting the next installment. I do hope, however, that Armstrong gives us a view of the fish out of water that Catriona Mitchell must be.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
