Disturbing The Dead

Victorian Scotland is becoming less strange to modern-day homicide detective Mallory Atkinson. Though inhabiting someone else’s body will always be unsettling, even if her employers know that she’s not actually housemaid Catriona Mitchell, ever since the night both of them were attacked in the same dark alley 150 years apart. Mallory likes her job as assistant to undertaker/medical examiner Dr. Duncan Gray, and is developing true friends―and feelings―in this century.

So, understanding the Victorian fascination with death, Mallory isn't that surprised when she and her friends are invited to a mummy unwrapping at the home of Sir Alastair Christie. When their host is missing when it comes time to unwrap the mummy, Gray and Mallory are asked to step in. And upon closer inspection, it’s not a mummy they’ve unwrapped, but a much more modern body.

I’ve enjoyed the first two books in this series (A Rip Through Time and The Poisoner’s Ring). Time travel/body swap mysteries in Scotland? I’m in!

While this story starts off with an intriguing mystery, it took a major turn that caught me by surprise. View Spoiler » I was absolutely not expecting Mallory to return to present day and to her own body! While I was wondering in the back of my mind as I’ve read the series if that would ever happen, I certainly didn’t think it would take place three books in! It was such a wonderfully unexpected moment. But I wish that there had been more of Mallory’s deliberations on whether or not to try and return to Grey’s era. By choosing to return, she was giving up so much – permanently: every modern convenience and knowledge, the rights of a modern woman, living in her own body, with her own face…it was too much for me to fathom. I could have used more of her internal struggle with the decision, partly because I knew for the sake of the book and the series continuing on that she would be going back to the past. I just wish I could have felt like she was really grappling with the gravity of the choice more. « Hide Spoiler

Getting back to the mystery, I thought it was well done and took the reader to some new, interesting locations and brought back some fascinating characters. This has been my favourite in the series so far.