Library limelights 309

Gillian McAllister. Wrong Place Wrong Time. USA: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2022.

A special character in the story (and a special reader, IMO) is required to immerse properly in this fiendishly devious mystery ‒ without getting dizzily confused. Although I've never had vertigo, that is surely what I felt at times. Lawyer Jen is our heroine, mother of nerdy teenager Todd and loving wife of Kelly Brotherhood. One October evening she sees Todd stab a stranger to death outside their home. She remembers every detail down to the face of the policeman who arrested him. She and Kelly follow, aghast, to the police station. When Jen wakes next morning, exhausted, it's not next day. It's the day before the killing. Reversal of time is the oh-so-clever device McAllister employs. The same weirdness occurs each day thereafter; Kelly doesn't believe her, Todd doesn't believe her. They think it's just one of Jen's wacky ideas.

Bewildered and disoriented, Jen pulls herself together as best she can, repeating/remembering the earlier days, but hopeful that somehow it may be a way to change her boy's scary future. On the other hand, she has no control over the relentless process that starts to skip days; ultimately going back to random days some years earlier. Or are they random? Andy, a scholar of time-travel and time loops, is only able to suggest paying attention to those past conversations―with her knowledge of the future she brings a new aspect to listening. The plot accelerates as she picks up information and clues about the man who was stabbed, about his connection to Todd's exotic girlfriend Clio, and the odd lie Kelly had told her long ago. How will the shiny new policeman, Ryan Hines, tie into Jen's journey?―the cop who is sent undercover in a dangerous gang. Where will her backward progression end? Whatever caused this unnatural spiral, it must have some meaning for her to work out.

Jen has to keep remembering that each day she re-visits, the people she sees have no knowledge of what they said on her previous day. Like a new riff on Bill Murray's groundhog days. A true tour de force. Can Jen change anything? Who are Kelly's unknown earlier associates? Will Todd commit the murder? I'm still trying to figure out an alleged brother and the stolen baby! Come on, brainiacs, are you up for this challenge?

One-liners

▪ Todd puts his wrists together willingly, like he is in a fucking movie, and he's cuffed, just like that, with a metallic click. (10)

▪ It is so hard to get used to a life lived backward. (89)

▪ "It's theoretically possible for you to have somehow created such a force that you are stuck in a closed time-like curve." (96)

▪ "When we meet in Liverpool in a week's time, you talk about the power of my subconscious landing me on certain days." (139)

▪ Ryan may not be in danger of getting arrested, but he is definitely in danger of getting fucking murdered. (229)

Multi-liners

▪ The first rule of law is never to dabble in something you don't specialize in. The second is never to represent your family. (13)

▪ She cannot deal with this. This is madness. Her heart feels like it's going to pound itself into a cardiac arrest. (27)

▪ He goes into the hallway and finds Todd's school bag. Empties it theatrically on to the hallway floor. No knife falls out. (61)

▪ "I'll try," he says simply, softly, to her. "I'll try to believe you." (85)

▪ "I wonder if I ‒ alone ‒ know something that can stop the murder," Jen says. "Deep in my subconscious." (97)

▪ Jen explains how Todd has been behaving strangely, and then she found the bundle containing the police badge and the poster. (131)

▪ "Have faith, Jen. There's an order to things that we sometimes don't even know." (140)

▪ Ryan loves the drama of it. The cut and thrust of policing. (149)

▪ Jen is sort of glad to note that Clio is an appeaser, just like Jen herself is. Clio could easily draw a boundary here, but she doesn't. (179)

Is Todd a killer?

Maybe this is her fault, she thinks, watching the television but not really watching it, too. She always found motherhood so hard. It had been such a shock. Such a vast reduction in the time available to her. She did nothing well, not work nor parenting. She put out fires in both for what felt like a decade straight, has only recently emerged. But maybe the damage is already done. (34)

Revelations

How sinister it is to live your life backward. To see things you hadn't at the time. To realize the horrible significance of events you had no idea were playing out around you. To uncover lies told by your husband. Jen would always have said Kelly was as straight as they come. But don't all good liars seem that way? (184)

Daniel Kalla. The Darkness in the Light. Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2022.

An unusual setting: an Alaskan summer, where the sun does not set, hence the "light" of the title. Specifically, a small town at the northernmost tip of the state called Utqiagvik (I'm only going to spell that once), previously known as Barrow. Dr. David Spears is an Anchorage psychiatrist with a number of patients in that town; communication is mainly by internet video, although he's leaving for one of his regular personal visits. To learn that a patient, a young mother, Brianna, killed herself before he arrives is completely disheartening. True to most of his breed, David has his own mental hurdles to manage; wife Beth has left him, taking their daughter Ali. But he's benefiting from Ketopram, a very new antidepressant, prescribing it for patients with similar symptoms. David's best friend Javier, who happens to be his shrink as well, is a strong advocate for the drug.

In the northern town, David meets Brianna's social worker Taylor Holmes for the first time; they are both deeply impacted by the tragedy. The mystery is why Brianna did it, especially by putting her toddler daughter in the back seat. The child had luckily managed to get out of the carbon monoxide-filling car. When a second suicide among his patients occurs, David becomes suspicious of Ketopram. The second young woman, Amka, drowned exactly as her sister had not so long ago. Javier comes to town to check on David's welfare—who's now feeling responsible for the deaths. Police chief Natan and his one detective, Kai, are too busy investigating a serious drug problem to question suicides, but David and Taylor are persistent in trying to make sense of them. Parents, friends, family doctor, boyfriends, an ex-teacher, all contribute pieces to the mystery. And then comes—a third "suicide," a brazen shooting, a drugs seizure, long distance phone calls.

Dr. Kalla is a smooth writer, so easy to read, so inventive. He could make a snowball into a plausible, entertaining mystery, populated with likeable characters. Although I've read only two of them, I'm sure his many other crime novels share a medical or scientific basis. In this work, there's a big, unusual kind of surprise. And frankly, in that kind of locale and drama, it's refreshing not to have the weather build a giant storm to trigger the conclusion. Don't ponder a few logistics too closely, just go with the midnight sun.

David

▪ Had Brianna already decided what she was going to do? Was that what she was struggling to tell me before I hurried to end our session? (24)

▪ "You keep asking if I noticed anything. What about you? Aren't you the one who's supposed to see the signs?" (39)

▪ The double whammy of losing both my parents within months contributed to my depression and, indirectly, to the dissolution of my marriage. (42)

▪ "How would you feel if you lived two thousand miles away from your daughter and only got to see her once a month?" (45)

▪ "Haven't you figured it out yet, David? Anyone who moves up here is running away from something." (73)

▪ The only reason a drug company would want to bury a study and fire its preeminent researcher was if it had shown something alarming. (105)

▪ "I'm not noncompliant," I said. "I chose not to stay on Ketopram." (145)

▪ "You really believe that, David?" he snorted. "That I would stake my reputation—my whole career―on some shares and a few paid speaking gigs?" (146)

Taylor

▪ "Eddie's the closest thing we have to organized crime in Utqiagvik. Not that it's all that organized." (65)

▪ Work fulfilled me. Usually. But today I felt particularly isolated and trapped beneath my avalanche of loss. (192)

▪ "I'm not convinced it'll go anywhere," I said. "But this whole tragic mess really does start with Brianna's death." (195)

▪ I'd noticed that Kai seemed most defensive whenever he sensed that his own intellect was being challenged. I'd picked up on the same insecurity around David. (200)

▪ He looked skyward. "First David blamed Ketopram? Now sexual abuse? Which was it exactly?" (216)

▪ "I'm going to track Keefer down." (216)

Others

▪ "She wasn't right after Bree killed herself. She couldn't stop talking about it." (180)

▪ Rick staggered a step or two, teetering for a moment before his legs gave way and he crumpled to the ground in a motionless heap. (183)

▪ "I'm not Walmart or something, Detective. I don't have employees." (199)