Monday 27 June 2016

Book ~ "A Murder in Time" (2016) Julie McElwain

From Goodreads ~ Beautiful and brilliant, Kendra Donovan is a rising star at the FBI. Yet her path to professional success hits a speed bump during a disastrous raid where half her team is murdered, a mole in the FBI is uncovered and she herself is severely wounded. As soon as she recovers, she goes rogue and travels to England to assassinate the man responsible for the deaths of her teammates. 

 While fleeing from an unexpected assassin herself, Kendra escapes into a stairwell that promises sanctuary but when she stumbles out again, she is in the same place - Aldrich Castle - but in a different time: 1815, to be exact. 

 Mistaken for a lady's maid hired to help with weekend guests, Kendra is forced to quickly adapt to the time period until she can figure out how she got there; and, more importantly, how to get back home. However, after the body of a young girl is found on the extensive grounds of the county estate, she starts to feel there's some purpose to her bizarre circumstances. Stripped of her twenty-first century tools, Kendra must use her wits alone in order to unmask a cunning madman. 

Kendra is an FBI agent.  When a mission goes wrong, most of her team is killed, she is badly hurt and it takes months for her to recover.  When she is well enough, she heads to England to get justice by killing the man responsible while at a costume party at a castle.  Things don't go as she planned and she is transported to 1815.

Not knowing if she was crazy or had indeed gone back in time, Kendra pretends to be a lady's maid.  When the body of a young woman is found murdered, Kendra uses her skills from the 21st century to help find the killer.

I enjoy murder mysteries and time travel stories so this was a combination of two of my favourites.  I liked the writing style ... I always find it interesting to see how people from present day react when thrust into the past.  In some respects, Kendra adapted well ... in others, she didn't as she discovered that she was a lousy lady's maid.  I figured out who the killer was with a clue that Kendra eventually remembered and it was a bit convoluted.  My only issue with this story was with the way Kendra took charge of the murder investigation and everyone let her.  Back in the those days, women were decoration ... plus Kendra was pretending to be a lowly servant.  No one would have listened to her and would have put her in her place.  But considering I bought into the fact that she had time traveled, I had to let it go.

This is the first in the Kendra Dovovan series and it will be interesting to see how the next one is.

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