A Rip Through Time

by Kelley Armstrong

In this series debut from New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong, a modern-day homicide detective finds herself in Victorian Scotland―in an unfamiliar body―with a killer on the loose.

May 20, 2019: Homicide detective Mallory 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 Thomson had been enjoying a half-day off, only to be discovered that night in a lane, where she’d been strangled and left for dead . . . exactly one-hundred-and-fifty years before Mallory was 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 the 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.

Outlander meets The Alienist in Kelley Armstrong's A Rip Through Time, the first book in this utterly compelling series, mixing romance, mystery, and fantasy with thrilling results.

• ISBN10: 1250820006
• ISBN13: 9781250820006
• Publish Date: 31 May 2022
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Imprint: Minotaur Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

A Rip Through Time is the first novel in Kelly Armstrong's series of the same name. It's the first series I've read by her that I couldn't define as fantasy, and it's always interesting to see how that transition will go. So let's dive into this adventure!

Mallory is a homicide detective currently on leave to visit her dying grandmother. So not exactly the best time of her life, right? Only things are about to get a little bit worse for Mallory, as a series of strange coincidences create an almost impossible event to believe.

You see, Mallory just so happened to be attacked in the same place and fashion as Housemaid Catriona – but with a one hundred and fifty-year difference. This somehow caused the two to (presumably) swap bodies.

I've been looking forward to reading A Rip Through Time from the moment I saw it announced. Luckily I was the first person at my local library to call dibs on it, so I got it pretty quickly! No waiting for me. Well, minus waiting until release day, that is.

A Rip Through Time is an enjoyable romp to the past. I think I loved it so much because it had a sense of humor in itself: that and the romantic subplot, which was a nice twist. But seriously, the idea of a homicide detective gets sent back in time? I love it.

Naturally, Mallory knows much more about investigations than those around her, given how much we've learned in the last hundred-plus years. But that doesn't mean she's perfectly prepared to deal with their world (time). It just means she has a different way of viewing things.

It was so easy to love Mallory and her personality. She's fierce and stubborn, with about a million other traits I could list. It made her the perfect candidate for surviving this strange ordeal. I enjoyed reading her interactions with the other characters, especially Duncan and Isla.

Some moments towards the end pulled me out of my enjoyment a bit. It seems silly to nitpick a time travel novel, but I felt the acceptance that followed certain revelations came too quickly. Almost like we didn't earn those moments? Maybe that's just me. However, I did enjoy everything else, so I'm not going to complain too much.

The implications left hanging in A Rip Through Time make it easy to understand why readers would be invested enough to continue reading this series. I know I'm too curious to be giving up now!

Read more reviews over at Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

A Rip Through Time is the first in a new time-travel mystery series by Kelley Armstrong. Released 31st May 2022 by Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint, it's 352 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. Paperback due out in early 2023. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a well written and eminently readable fantasy time travel murder mystery. The main protagonist is an intelligent strong and capable young Canadian policewoman visiting Scotland to be with her grandmother who's in hospice care.

The time-travel aspect as well as the investigation in the past were well built up and executed. I liked the dialogue and the author was good at the period aspects of both dialogue and class behavior as well as social roles. The limits of the period technology, and MC Mallory's internal reasoning are well rendered and believable.

The plotting dragged a bit at the beginning for me and I found myself tempted to skim here and there. It's the beginning of a series, and it's understandable that the author would expend a thorough effort with world building and characterization, so I refrained from skipping ahead. Further on in the novel, I found the mystery itself somewhat linear, but the denouement and resolution were well done and satisfying. There's a Quantum Leap aspect which I enjoyed and the later parts of the book were engaging and entertaining.

The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 14 hours and is narrated by Kate Handford. She has a rich generic North American/Canadian accent and does a good job of the narration with the exception of the bits of Scottish dialogue, which weren't especially accurate. I've been told that Victorian Edinburgh's dialects are fiendishly difficult, and Glaswegian is worse. It wasn't a distraction and for the vast majority of the read I found her voice quite pleasant and well modulated. The sound and production quality are high throughout.

Four stars. I'll definitely be looking for upcoming books in the series.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.