Book Review: A Haunting or a Hoax?

An Ordinary Sort of Evil (A Rip Through Time Novel), by Kelley Armstrong (St Martins)

I love time-travel stories, especially those with a hint (or more!) of mystery and romance. Kelley Armstrong’s “A Rip Through Time” series checks all the boxes. In addition, she has a gift for bringing the reader into the story without needing to read all the previous volumes. The setup takes Mallory Mitchell, a 21^st Century homicide detective, into Victorian Scotland. The catch is that she doesn’t travel in her own (fit, martial-arts trained) body, she gets stuffed into that of a buxom housemaid, an outrageous flirt with ties to the criminal underground. In the early episodes, Mallory reveals her identity and forms alliances with the housemaid’s employer, forensic-science pioneer/undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie, with the three working murder cases together.

Now Duncan and Mallory are summoned urgently to the home of Lady Adler, where they find a séance instead of a death in the household. The spirit identifies herself as Lady Adler’s missing maid and pleads that Duncan find her killer. How much is a hoax, and has a real crime been committed? One plot twist leads to another, against the background of a simmering romance between Mallory and Duncan. Drenched in historical detail, well-portrayed characters, and nuanced relationships-across-centuries, the book kept me enthralled until the final revelation—and eager to read the next chapter in the love story.