A RIP THROUGH TIME

A Vancouver police detective visiting Edinburgh is magically transported back to 1869, where she gets involved in a murder case in which her avatar is deeply implicated.

One moment Detective Mallory Atkinson is getting throttled by an identifiable man; the next she’s awakening as Catriona Mitchell, who’s been similarly strangled and left for dead in the same spot. The second attack turns out to be useful for Mallory, who uses Catriona’s trauma as an excuse for forgetting lots of things she ought to know as housemaid to undertaker Duncan Gray, whose medical degree sharpens his interest in the death of Evening Courant crime reporter Archie Evans, a victim of what only Mallory recognizes as waterboarding. What did Archie know that someone wanted to torture out of him? Partnering alternately with Edinburgh Detective Hugh McCreadle; her employer; and Gray’s half sister, shrewd herbalist Isla Ballantyne, Mallory peers into Edinburgh’s seamy underside as she struggles to uncover the truth. It’s a tough job because the most dramatic discoveries she makes are that the woman whose body she’s inhabiting is a bully and a thief and maybe worse and that Evans’ killer, who goes on to stage another murder that uncannily foretells the work of Jack the Ripper, may well be another visitor from the 21st century. Armstrong handles the time-traveling problems concerning Mallory’s disjointed consciousness and other characters’ awareness that she’s not your typical housemaid with unusual resourcefulness and dexterity. Although the heroine is desperate to return to her own time and place by hook or by crook, the fade-out presents a future that’s pleasingly ambiguous.

The murders are the least mysterious aspect of this clever time-traveling thriller.