Honey Black could have been one of the greatest film stars of the Golden Age of Hollywoord, were it not for the fact that she was brutally murdered in the Paul Williams suite of the prestigious Beverly Hills Hotel in 1949 while filming the picture that would have cemented her status and launched her career into the stratosphere. No one was ever convicted of the crime and she has been reduced to a footnote in Hollywood history.

In 2019, Lily has high hopes of a career behind the scenes in Hollywood, but for the time being is, to make ends meet, cleaning hotel rooms for a living – in particular the aforementioned Paul Rivers suite. She blacks out and before you can say Goodnight Sweetheart, Lily finds herself in 1949, two weeks before Honey was murdered. Stumbling into a job as Honey’s PA, Lily tries to make sense of her situation – and, completely ignorant of good time travel etiquette, decides that it’s up to her to save Honey’s life… Oh boy!

I’ve decided that now that the CWA has shortlisted for the Whodunnit Dagger, I will take a run at reviewing all six titles before the ceremony. When I saw the list recently, I used it as the inspiration for reading a couple of titles, namely this and A Mumbai Murder Mystery as the sequels were on the longlist. Well, they’re both on the shortlist now and now that I’ve read book one of each series, I can read book two without spoilers, should I want to. Of course, that depends on whether this one was any good or not…

You know what I’ve been missing in a mystery recently? No, not the chance to make jokes about Quantum Leap or dodgy bigamy-promoting British sitcoms, but a cast of suspects where almost any of them could have done it. There’s no obvious killer, no subset that are just there to make up numbers, just a collection of people who might have a reason to kill our potential victim. Fully rounded characters, all with secrets, some large, some small, and all of whom I found to be convincingly real, despite the time travel shenanigans (which is really only used for the set-up, in case you were lured in by the “for fans of Stuart Turton” blurb.)

This was fun, a really entertaining read. Lisa Hall resists the urge to pad the novel with celebrity cameos – there are a few, but only a few – and while it necessarily addresses the difference in attitudes, in particular towards women, in the 1940s and 2010s, it doesn’t have Lily converting the entire female cast into card-carrying feminists. Well, maybe one or two… I did like Lily’s struggles to avoid swearing as the phrase “f*ckety-f*ck” while not being wonderful these days was basically sacrilege back in the day…

Clues are a bit thin on the ground – there are a couple towards the end – and I did guess the murderer quite early, but there was still enough uncertainty to keep me curious. And to be honest, I was really enjoying myself, so I wasn’t going to put the book down.

There is one odd bit, with Lily becomes suddenly absolutely convinced that she will go back to the present if she saves Honey, a certainty which came a bit out of nowhere, I thought. Oh, and I’m a little worried after one late (non-murdery) revelation that things might be going vaguely Philip J Fry if we’re not careful…

I’m a little wary of recommending this for someone who wants a book about the intricacies of time travel and paradoxes – it’s not that sort of book – but if you want a murder mystery with a glamourous setting, interesting characters and an intriguing plot, then this might well be the one for you. Looking forward to taking a look at the second title very soon.

P.S. One thing, don’t be put off by the phrase “time-hop” on the cover. Just saying because it’s really twee and if I’d seen it before reading it, it might have made me change my mind…