Wrong Place Wrong Time – Gillian Mcallister

Published By: Penguin Michael Joseph
Pages: 400
Released On: 12/05/2022

It’s every parent’s nightmare.

Your happy, funny, innocent son commits a terrible crime: murdering a complete stranger. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your teenage boy is in custody and his future lost.

That night you fall asleep in despair. Until you wake…and it is yesterday.

Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. Another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lie the answers, and you don’t have a choice but to find them.

*****

Thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.

Even though I’ve heard such rave reviews for Gillian’s work, this is the first of her books I’ve had the pleasure of reading and it was sublime.

It is such a unique concept – solving and preventing a crime backwards – but it worked so well that I wonder why it’s not been done before. Maybe it needed someone of Gillian’s talent to do it justice.

The characters – of which there are quite a few – leap off the page, particularly Jen. They’re so well written and so familiar that you can almost reach out and touch them, be part of their family.

There are hints and clues and red herrings littered through the book but it’s never obvious what is going to happen. Gillian has been so clever at hiding the truth.

It sounds like such an obvious thing to say, but I can’t even imagine how difficult this book was to write. I’m trying to write a murder mystery and it’s hard enough to write when I don’t know how someone did it. But for this, before she even started writing, I assume Gillian would have had to figure out who did it, why they did it, and when they did it. How? She she write it conventionally? Or did she start at the end? Did she write it forwards or backwards? We’re following it at Jen’s pace, trying to fit the puzzle pieces together, whilst Gillian has got it all written up in her head. It is truly impressive

There are some real gasp out loud moments where you’re completely shocked. If you’re like me, you will audibly shout WTF on more than one occasion, as the plot and the characters slip and slide through Jen’s lifetime. This book is mind bending and mind blowing and simply captivating.