Gillian McAllister's time travel, crime mystery has a lot of clever twists to steer the reader through a back-in-time travel for an enjoyable page turner. Jan has been happily married to Kelly for 20 years. Jen is an attorney, Kelly a freelance contractor and together they have an 18 year old son, Todd. Although legally an adult but still a teenager, Jen waits up for Todd to return home. Just past curfew she spots her son outside and sees him walking towards a stranger. The unthinkable happens. Todd pulls out a knife and stabs the man. Jen races outside in horror. She can't fathom how or why her son would kill someone. She can't understand a lot more when she wakes the following morning to the day before the crime occurred. The sci-fi scenario of traveling back in time is convincing as is the way Jen responds to her time travels. She seeks help from a researcher in this hard to believe field of study who assures her. "It seems to me that you do, actually already understand the rules of the universe you are unwillingly in. It's theoretically possible for you to have somehow created such a force that you are stuck in a closed time-like curve." Jen wonders about "time loops, about the butterfly effect, changing one tiny thing. I wonder if I-alone-know something that can stop the murder." This premise turns Jen into a time traveling sleuth who will do anything to prevent her son from committing murder. Each regressive day adds an insight into what led up to the calamitous event. This makes an enticing way to gather insights into what unfolds in the future. But Jen's assessment of her parenting skills which believes must have contributed to her son's actions were wrong as they were tiresome and detracted from solving the crime. "All the ways she ineffectually mothered Todd crowd into her mind. Feeding him too much so he slept more, upending the bottle while watching daytime television, bored, no eye contact." The mystery deviates with more interest into Jen and Kelly's romance and early marriage as Jen's foreknowledge plays a fun role. Typical yet poignant do overs are the visits between Kelly and her beloved father who has passed. And, the do-over theme got driven home often as Jen muses, "the things in my life that I would just stand and truly, fully witness." The time I spent with WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME was a rewarding read until the very end which was only slightly surprising and felt too easily realized. I believe some sources needed to be questioned even though I readily accepted the magical premise of revisiting the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment