Fiction Reviews
A Crime Through Time
(2025) Amelia Blackwell, Pan, £18.99, hrdbk, 357pp, ISBN 978-1-035-05409-1
The story opens in 1799 at Pemberley, a grand house in Derbyshire. It is the family home of the Darcy family and Miss Georgiana Darcy has a problem; as she is now twenty her elder brother, the head of the family, has decided that it is time she got married. Marriage, in this instance, is all about keeping money and property firmly in the hands of the most important families so a suitable husband is judged only by his wealth, property, and family. As far as Georgiana is concerned, all her suitors are obnoxious old men who are interested in nothing but her money; if she must be married, she wants it to be to a younger man and one that she actually likes. As she walks in the grounds, passing through an area of woodland, she hears a shrill and very insistent noise. She finds it is coming from a small object with a smaller window that glows and has some sort of writing on it, a device the like of which she has never seen. Hoping it will stop the noise, she presses the button on the device which to modern eyes looks like a pager.
She realises she is no longer where she was - the grand house in front of her is not Pemberley! She soon discovers that she is in now at Saltram House, near Plymouth in distant Devonshire, and the year is 1995. Before that, though, she sees high in the sycamore tree above her that there is body, a farmer by the look of him, and he has clearly been murdered. Heading for the house to summon help, not yet knowing where or when she is, she finds that there are many people about, half of them dressed somewhat as herself but the rest in outlandish clothing the like of which is unknown to her. Normally, someone appearing from two hundred years ago, in their fine clothing and manners of speech, would stick out like a sore thumb but she is in luck - Saltram is currently a film set and they are filming a period piece.
The people she meets think she must be an extra (extra cast member) and they comment both that the wardrobe department has excelled itself and that she is clearly keeping in character, a method actress. Greatly confused, she comes across Quinn, a young man who works for Saltram House rather than the film company, and he takes her under his wing. Before she can report the murder, a scream alerts everyone that something nasty has happened. Rushing to the sycamore, she expects to see that the farmer’s body has been discovered - but there is no sign of it. There is, though, the body of very dead young woman, her throat cut from ear to ear.
At that moment the time-travelling pager shrieks again and, pressing the button, Georgiana returns home. Unfortunately, Lady Catherine has arrived for a few days. Lady Catherine is her aunt and a determined lady who always knows what is best for everyone whilst not listening to anybody, a force that the family somehow has to deal with. Furthermore, she has invited along with her the gentleman who she has decided is Georgiana’s most suitable suitor (but who is intensely disliked by Georgiana). Suddenly Georgina cannot wait to return to Saltram and the handsome Quinn.
She soon gets to do so and finds Quinn again. Whilst most still see her as an extra, Quinn had noticed something - she had disappeared right in front of him then, only seconds later, reappeared but in different clothing and her hair arranged differently. There is something very strange about this young lady, and he is also getting suspicious about several other things. And so Georgiana, with Quinn’s help, sets about solving the murders, of which there are several.
Whilst the book kicked off very quickly, it only took six pages for her to arrive at Saltram, but generally the pace of the story is very slow. A lot of time is spent at Pemberley and consists mostly of Georgiana worrying about her family and her marital future but, apart from scene-setting, this does nothing much for the story. Whilst at Saltram, Georgiana is a fish out of water; there are so many words she does not understand and most of the idioms of our times are beyond her. When Quinn refers to his horseless carriage as a Beetle, she assume that is because of its shining contours. When he refers to the cost of petrol, she wonders why he is talking about His Majesty’s warship the Peterel, or maybe he was referring somehow to the seabird called a petrel?
The basis of the story is the situation which would face anyone who suddenly finds themselves cast well into the future – everything is different, technology has moved on a long way and you do not know how day-to-day things work or even what they are, clothing and speech are different, and so is society. To the locals it is, of course, all completely normal, but to the time traveller it is almost beyond understanding. However, you need more than this for a time-travel story to work as a novel.
The use of a pager as a time-travelling device was an interesting idea, but I would have liked some sort of explanation. As it was, it was more of a magic wand, working only when it was needed by the plot but not at other times. How had it travelled in time? Who was sending the messages that triggered it? I know that in science fiction we have to suspend disbelief, but some sort of rationale would have helped.
The story was told in short chapters, as few as two pages but some up to maybe ten pages, and I enjoyed that each chapter had an interesting name such as ‘Unchaperoned With A Strange Queen’ and ‘A Concealment And A Hidden Motive’. Whilst the book is nicely enough written, not a lot happens for much of it. The time-travelling pager was simply a device to justify a fish-out-of-water element and played continually on the little day-to-day problems of somebody from the past trying to understand our modern world, problems that Georgiana constantly tripped over. There really needed to be more of a plot – more happening – to hold my attention, as my attention was certainly not held.
I do enjoy a good time-travel tale and, though this ticks along well enough, it did not really make the grade for me: there was just not enough of a story to keep me that interested, though I did like the underpinning idea behind it.
Peter Tyers
See also Tim's take on A Crime Through Time.
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