Schemes and Scandals (A Rip Through Time 3.5) by Kelley Armstrong-review

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date December 1, 2024

It’s Mallory Atkinson’s first Christmas in Scotland. Victorian Scotland, that is. Also, as the twenty-first-century detective learns, Christmas really isn’t a thing in Victorian Scotland. It’s all about Hogmanay. But her boss, Dr. Duncan Gray, treats her to an early gift of tickets to the event of the season: a Charles Dickens reading. There, they bump into Lady Inglis—the lovely widow who has sent Gray sexy letters trying to entice him back to her bed.

Lady Inglis introduces Mallory to Dickens—the meeting of a lifetime—but in return she wants their help. She’s being blackmailed. Someone stole letters she wrote to another lover and is threatening to publish them.

Mallory isn’t sure what to make of Lady Inglis, but no woman deserves that, so she insists on taking the case with or without Gray’s help. Growing tension between them soon tells Mallory that Gray is hiding a secret of his own. She has until Hogmanay to uncover the blackmailer…and, hopefully, to put things right with Gray so they can enjoy the holiday together.

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REVIEW:SCHEMES AND SCANDALS is an adult holiday novella set in Kelley Armstrong’s SCHEMES AND SCANDALS time travel mystery series focusing on thirty year old, Vancouver, Canada Police Detective Mallory Atkinson, and undertaker/investigator Dr. Duncan Gray. SCHEMES AND SCANDALS can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty but I recommend reading book one A RIP THROUGH TIME for back story and cohesion.

SOME BACKGROUND: In the spring of 2019 while visiting her ailing grandmother in Edinburgh Scotland, thirty year old, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada police detective Mallory Atkinson is attacked in an alley only to wake up as a nineteen year old housemaid in Scotland, in the year 1869, a housemaid who was also attacked and left for dead in the same alley where Mallory was found. Not only has our heroine time travelled back one-hundred and fifty years but she is no longer physically the same woman she was just minutes before. Working as a housemaid for Dr. Duncan Gray and his sister Isla, realizing life as she knew it was no longer under her control, Mallory must assume the position of nineteen year old Catriona Mitchell, a young woman whose history is questionable and dark. Working alongside Dr. Gray and Detective McCreadie, Mallory uses her abilities as a detective to help.

Told from first person perspective (Mallory) SCHEMES AND SCANDALS focuses on the days before the traditional Christmas holidays but Scotland did not celebrate Christmas in 1869 therefore the tradition of Hogmanay (the arrival of the New Year) was fast approaching, and Mallory and Duncan were about to find themselves involved in another investigation, the theft of some very private and scandalous letters written by a widow to her secret lover. As Mallory and Duncan begin to interview a number of possible suspects, our heroine will employ the use some of the 21st century simple technology in an effort to determined the person responsible.

We are introduced to Lady Patricia Ingles, Lord Charles Simpson, and his brother Arthur, and several local inhabitants of 1869, as well as the return of Dr. Duncan Gray, his sister Isla, housemaid ‘Jack’, housekeeper Mrs. Wallace, and Detective Hugh McCreadie.

SCHEMES AND SCANDALS is a quick read; a fascinating and intriguing tale of ‘whodunit?’. The premise is captivating; the characters are determined and charismatic.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
A Rip Through Time
The Poisoner’s Ring
2.5 Cocktails & Chloroform
Disturbing the Dead

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

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Kelley Armstrong has been telling stories since before she could write. Her earliest written efforts were disastrous. If asked for a story about girls and dolls, hers would invariably feature undead girls and evil dolls, much to her teachers’ dismay. All efforts to make her produce “normal” stories failed.

Today, she continues to spin tales of ghosts and demons and werewolves, while safely locked away in her basement writing dungeon. She’s the author of the NYT-bestselling “Women of the Otherworld” paranormal suspense series and “Darkest Powers” young adult urban fantasy trilogy, as well as the Nadia Stafford crime series. Armstrong lives in southwestern Ontario with her husband, kids and far too many pets.