A Rip Through Time

“Rockton” series author Armstrong builds an intense, intricately plotted mystery in this series debut. Vancouver police detective Mallory Atkinson is in Edinburgh, Scotland, to be with her beloved grandmother, who is dying. When she’s out running, she hears a scream and follows it down an alley. Instead of saving the woman, Mallory is attacked and loses consciousness. She wakes up in an Edinburgh household in 1869. She’s in the body of Catriona Mitchell, the 19-year-old housemaid she saw being strangled. She’s lucky that Dr. Duncan Gray is her employer because he’s fascinated by forensics, and together with a police detective, he’s interested in new methods. He’s even willing to allow his housemaid to assist in his studies. Mallory believes the only way to get back to 2019 is to find the man who killed Catriona. She hides her knowledge of 21st-century police procedures while juggling her investigation and her incompetence as a housemaid. As the strangler escalates his killing, Mallory works with a small team of investigators without revealing she’s from the future.