Library Journal
12/01/2015
Hugh Stanton, visiting his old Cambridge professor at Christmastime in 2024, gets pulled into one of their old "what if?" games. Professor McCluskey liked to challenge students to think of the one thing in history they would change. It turns out not to be an idle question this time, and Hugh learns that the professor was the inheritor of a box of papers left by Isaac Newton to be opened that very Christmas. The 17th-century scientist had predicted a loop in time, when 2024 would overlap with 1914, allowing a traveler to go back in time. Hugh is tasked with going back to that fateful year to stop one of the turning points in world history: the start of World War I. VERDICT Elton's (Two Brothers; High Society) thoroughly entertaining entry in the time-travel genre gives readers a dashing leading man trotting the globe on his secret mission to a historical moment fraught with danger, in which every choice can have unintended consequences.—MM