BookLife Review: Wrong Place Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister
Crime, murder mystery, time travel, mother-son
In Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place Wrong Time, a mother witnesses her son commit a crime, a stabbing murder, and awakens the next morning to find that it is a day earlier-the day before the crime has happened. She continues to travel back in days and weeks and years prior to unravel the crime, and the mysterious circumstances that led her son to this event. Her travel back in time allows her to revisit her parenting, which she torments herself about as a working mom, her relationship with her husband and with her father.
The story, with time-travel involved, is, of course, a bit mind-bending, in the style of Memento movie (but significantly less confusing!). McAllister deftly probes the tenderness of the mother-son bond at first, and as she travels back, learns even more that she had not known about her own father and her connection with him. Wrong Place Wrong Time will delight crime readers who will forge ahead eagerly attempting to figure out what happened (and why she is time traveling!). Others will need to suspend their fantasy skepticism and just go along for the ride. Calling all mothers out there—would you not love to have the power to understand, and perhaps reverse, some of your child’s more knucklehead moves. Read this one and let your mind explode a little with that imaginative thought.