A Rip Through Time
This book was a pick from libby when I was browsing, wondering what my next read was going to be. August was a pretty busy month, from a books POV, and I’d run out of books I wanted to read that wasn’t already awaiting in my Holds queue.
So Libby suggested this book, and being a bit of a mystery sucker, I picked it up. It had some shades of BBC’s excellent “Life on Mars”, in which a modern cop goes back to an age before modern policing as we know it exists, and thought why not.
I can’t say I regret my time spent on this book, as the premise was quite interesting. The main character basically goes back to a Victorian time (in Scotland, not England) after a scuffle with the main antagonist in the modern world. There, the actual mystery as usual isn’t that interesting as the parts where the main character has to figure out things. So unlike, “Life on Mars”, the main character ends up in the body of another person, she’s not sent back as she was. So she has to figure out what her character was like, and fortunately for her, she’s a housemaid in a well-to-do family who does grave digging and other related services. The household, fortunately for her, is fairly good at having relatively modern viewpoints, so she never has to put up with the misogyny that was rife until the late 20th century.
Her character however, apparently was a bit of a low life, so she has to overcome the setbacks that her previous life have left her. Mostly, everyone distrusts you because of the bad things you’ve done before.
With that said, the fact that I found that was the most interesting part of the book is a bit telling in a mystery novel. the actual mystery isn’t very good, and once again, not a lot of clues to lead you into the right conclusion, but you kind of don’t mind since you’re engaging with the main character in trying to figure out how to live life in a victorian world. No running water, big houses employing lots of people because that’s how much work it took to upkeep those houses, everyone is somewhat puritanical in their outlook, which can help things a bit. Oh, and the policework, or lack thereof. No fingerprint, no files, everything is done on a “he said” basis (she said, as a concept is not going to exist for quite some time.
In any case I thought this was still quite a good read and don’t regret the time I spent on it. Worth reading if you’ve run out of other material you’d rather engage in.