Ali Dawson works for a very special Cold Case department – cases so cold that they could only be solved if someone discovered a long-lost eye-witness account of the crime… or, failing that, if one could observe the case oneself. If only you had a time machine…

When the unit is contacted by Tory MP Isaac Templeton, one of the few people who know the truth about the department, Ali prepares herself for the most ambitious trip they have tried – back to 1850 to clear the name of Cain Templeton, his great-great-grandfather, a man reputed to have murdered three women to join The Collectors, a secret society with mysterious ambitions.

And would you believe it, when Ali goes back to 1850, she gets stuck there. And that’s just the start of her problems…

OK, first off, don’t read the blurb. At least the one on Amazon – first paragraph and a clear spoiler…

First off, congratulations to Elly Griffiths for winning the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel Of The Year for this one. It clearly caught the voters’ attention with its original premise and charming characters and twisty plot. And they were right on those counts – Ali and her son Finn, in particular, are exceptionally well-drawn, and the plot never stays still, with twists and shifts that I wasn’t expecting. As one example, the murder that ends up being investigated is not one that I expected. There are a good few chapters that could easily end with a dramatic “Dum-Dum-Dum!”

However…

… sorry, the science nerd in me has some problems with the time travel mechanic. I appreciate that some of this will be undoubtedly explained in later books, but it was really unclear if going back in time could change the past, a la Back To The Future, or whether the events had always played out this way. The idea of the time machine working so that it’s one person back and then that person can come back, but if a person from the past wanders through the portal to the future, then the first person is stuck in the past is clever, but there’s a second… thing happening that leaves too many questions – how did SPOILER know that there was a BLANK he could BLANK in to travel BLANKwards in time, given he didn’t use it to get to where he was? – that I presume will be followed up in the next book.

And with so many questions on that aspect of the story dangling, I found it a little unsatisfying. Clearly this is part one of a much larger story, with most of the aspects that I wanted to ponder being threads that will hang over into the subsequent books – the series is planned to be at least three books and a Christmas novella (naturally featuring Charles Dickens) according to Amazon. I suppose the question will be, how long will some of the questions be dangled until they are resolved…

But this is a very good read, and I will be back for Book Two to see how things progress. A very interesting book – let’s see how the series goes.