Fiction Reviews
Time to Burn
(2026) Ellery Lloyd, Macmillan, £15.99, trdpbk, 307pp, ISBN 978-1-035-02100-0
The tagline for this book is: ‘When the past catches up with you, time travel can be murder’, which is actually a good summation of the plot of Time to Burn. Yes, there are large sections where the characters travel to the past (WW2); yes, there is a plotline focused on how events altered in the past can affect events in the present and yes, there is a murder (or two) to solve. Plus, as an added bonus, the book’s title: ‘Time to Burn’ is also an indication of some important moments in the narrative.
Written by a husband and wife writing team (Paul Vlitos and Collette Lyons), Time to Burn is a fast-moving time travel thriller. The protagonist – Phoebe Hunt – a critically acclaimed documentary film maker has been given full access to make a film about Inigo Frank, an Elon Musk type character who has made a lot of money through his time travel company ‘Tempus Tours’.
There are extracts from the script of Phoebe’s award winning documentary throughout the narrative (the only indication that there are two authors here). Her documentary was an investigation into a cult/commune called the Living Family. The interesting twist here is that Phoebe’s father was head of the commune and she herself grew up there.
The first part of the book focuses on a Tempus Travel trip to 1941, to London, right in the middle of the Blitz. Only the uber-rich can afford Inigo Frank’s time travel packages and the four characters who are on the trip are dripping with money and privilege. They feel they want/deserve more than just to observe – they want to actually experience what it was like to be caught up in the bombing. So, with a lot of planning, the four of them are having drinks at the Café de Paris on Leicester Square, just before it was heavily and fatally bombed on 8th March 1941. Their tour guide has timed it so they will escape just in time and safely make it back to the aperture to the present day. Except they don’t all return.
As a film maker, Phoebe films the ensuing panic back at Tempus Tours and then realises that she knows the person who hasn’t returned from 1941. This is when the characters’ stories begin to merge and the different themes begin to develop.
Up until halfway through this book, my opinion was that this was a great story about how time travel could be used as revenge, as a means for someone to get their own back. However, the second half of the book does not really develop this and, although there are ‘twists and turns galore’, I felt that some opportunities were missed by the author(s).
Yet, the attention to detail is immaculate and the slow reveal of each character’s back story is expertly done. It’s a pacey plot, cleverly executed: a compelling read.
Sandra Baker
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