Death at a Highland wedding

In A Rip through Time (2022), Armstrong introduced readers to Mallory Atkinson, a twenty-first-century homicide cop who, after a vicious assault in an alley, wakes up 150 years in the past, in the body of another woman, Catriona Mitchell, who is doomed to be strangled in the same alley in 1869. Mallory has to solve that cold case to survive. In the fourth book in this irresistible series, Mallory has settled into her life in Victorian Scotland; as Catriona, she assists Detective Hugh McCreadie and medical examiner Dr. Duncan Gray with their investigations, and their latest case, involving a murder at a country estate, features complications that only Mallory can resolve. As with Julie McElwain's Kendra Donovan series, about a modern-day FBI agent catapulted back in time, the success of the book lies in the details: the vividly realized historical environment, the period-appropriate characters, and the thrill of watching a cop trying to adapt modern-day forensic techniques to an era in which they were utterly unknown. Series fans will be lining up for this one.

A present-day police detective whisked off to Victorian Scotland sets about solving crimes. While visiting her grandmother in Edinburgh, Vancouver police Detective Mallory Atkinson witnesses a crime, is attacked, and suddenly finds herself back in 1869 in the body of housemaid Catriona Mitchell. Catriona works for Duncan Gray, a doctor now running his family undertaking business, who assists his best friend, Det. Hugh McCreadie, with forensic investigations. Honoring her talent for detection, Gray has made Catriona his assistant and brought her into his home. The presence of his eccentric sister, Isla, does not preclude neighbors from assuming that Catriona is Gray's mistress. Only the household knows that Catriona is really Mallory, who must struggle to conceal her 21st-century mores. When they are all invited to the Highland wedding of McCreadie's sister, Fiona, it turns out to be a gathering fraught with hidden undercurrents. Even before their arrival, they meet with ill will from the groom, Archie Cranston, whose sister, Violet, was formerly engaged to McCreadie. The unhappiness of the tenants at the groom's hunting lodge, where the ceremony is to take place, has been exacerbated by the boorish Austrian gamekeeper and his mantraps, which, to Mallory's fury, have wounded a Scottish wildcat and killed its mother. During a walk, Mallory, Gray, and McCreadie find part of a butchered deer and then the body of Cranston's friend Ezra Sinclair wearing Cranston's coat. When the inexperienced and opinionated local constable arrests Cranston, the investigative trio intervene. Was Sinclair or Cranston the target for murder? And is the killer a disgruntled local or one of their own friends? Time travel provides the framework for a captivating mystery and intriguing insights into life in 1870s Scotland. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.