Book Review by Julie Kish
A Rip Through Time, The Poisoner’s Ring, Disturbing the Dead
Novels by Kelly Armstrong
Minotaur Books, 2022-2024
If there is such a thing as a feel-good murder mystery, time travel and historical novel, this book is it! Canadian author Kelly Armstrong has written three thoroughly immersive murder mysteries set in Victorian-era Scotland. The twist is that the murders are solved by a female homicide detective from the present who has been mysteriously thrown back in time.
Don’t let the “time travel” premise turn you away from these engrossing, intelligent and thoroughly entertaining novels. Part of the fun is watching the protagonist awkwardly and comically adjust from a modern woman to a subservient Victorian-era housemaid. The books are as fun as an Agatha Christie murder mystery and as educational as impeccably researched historical fiction.
In the first novel, A Rip Through Time, we meet the protagonist, Mallory Atkinson, a Vancouver homicide detective who is visiting her dying grandmother in Edinburgh, Scotland. While out jogging, she hears a woman being attacked in an alley, and when she tries to help, Mallory is strangled into unconsciousness. She wakes up in the same alley but discovers she has been transported back in time to 1869. She also finds herself in the body of a 19-year-old housemaid named Catriona, who was strangled and left for dead in the same alley precisely 150 years before Mallory was attacked.
Mallory hopes to find a way back to her own time by discovering who tried to kill the housemaid, and decides to do her best to fit into her new time so she won’t be locked up in a lunatic asylum. Luckily, Catriona is a housemaid for city coroner Dr. Duncan Gray, and Mallory can use her modern-day detective skills to help the coroner solve the crime. Ultimately, she helps Dr. Gray identify a serial killer, but she must do this without modern technology and while pretending to have no knowledge of detective work.
This fantastic story features dark cloaked figures, imposters, double-crossing villains and cliff-hanging chapter endings that make it difficult to stop reading. The author has created a colourful cast of well-developed characters that carry through each novel.
The first book wraps up the current murder mystery but lays the groundwork for the next adventure. In the second novel, The Poisoner’s Ring, 2023, Mallory has begun to adjust to her new life in Victorian Edinburgh and continues to help her employer solve crimes. Men begin to drop dead from a powerful poison, and Dr. Gray’s older sister is the suspected killer. Mallory is determined to find the true killer so the sister can be exonerated.
By the time I read the third book, Disturbing the Dead, 2024, the exceptionally likable and well-developed characters felt like close friends. In this novel, Dr. Gray and Mallory are called on to unwrap an ancient mummy and are surprised to find a recently deceased man under the strips of cloth. The second and third installments in the trilogy are every bit as suspenseful as the first book, and the unexpected plot twists are very clever.
I highly recommend this series to anyone looking for well-written, entertaining page-turners.