For anyone of a certain age (🤫 Gen-X 🤫), any reference to changing the future probably brings on immediate thoughts of the Back to the Future series. Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly spends three movies using a time-traveling DeLorean to “fix” the past as a way to correct the future. Action-packed comedies, the movies don’t require a suspension of disbelief because they’re all unbelievable. But they’re fun, and for these types of movies, that’s really all that matters.

As a Gen-Xer, I found myself watching another time-traveling series though. From 1989 to 1993, I was completely hooked on the TV show Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett and Dean Stockwell as Rear Admiral Al Calavicci. The introduction each week explained the concept:

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator, and vanished. He awoke and found himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.”

Viewers would see Sam as Scott Bakula, but the people around Sam (and when he looked in a mirror), would see whoever he had leapt into. And the person he leapt into actually ended up dazed and confused in the future with Al, so it wasn’t always easy for them to figure out why Sam had leapt into a certain time and place.

There were some funny episodes, especially at the beginning of the series when Sam didn’t know what was happening. Obviously, there were occasions when he leapt into female characters, which were almost always hilarious. And the series was able to take on some pretty heavy historical characters and took some liberties with the stories.

In one episode, he leaps into Elvis to save a woman from a bad marriage. In another, he leaps into Lee Harvey Oswald and is devastated that he fails to save President Kennedy, only for Al to tell him that he was sent to save Jackie. In a couple others, he leaps into his great-grandfather and then later on into himself at an earlier time in his life.

I found the series fascinating…the idea of changing the past to change the future. And clearly someone thought it was a great idea because there’s a new version that started last year set 30 years after Sam Beckett started his quantum journey. I haven’t started watching it yet, but I plan to. I hope it’s as good as the original.

I finished a book recently with the theme of predicting the future…and sometimes righting the wrongs of the past. It’s questionable whose version of right and wrong the characters are following, and it was an incredible read.

---

Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐½
4.5 Stars for The Angel Maker by Alex North

322 pages
Publisher: Celadon Books
Publication Date: February 28, 2023
The Creepy Book Club selection for April 2023, purchased on Amazon.

Publisher’s Description

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever.

Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.

************

Main Characters:

• Katie Shaw – 34-year-old teacher, married to Sam, a musician; they have a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Siena; when Katie and Sam were teenagers, Katie’s brother was brutally attacked and she has always felt responsible for not being where she was supposed to be
• Christopher Shaw – Katie’s younger brother; since being attacked as a teenager, he got hooked on drugs and lived on the streets; Katie hasn’t seen him since she called the police on him for stealing from her, but their mother tells Katie he has sobered up and turned his life around; has recently gone missing
• Laurence Page – detective who responded to Christopher’s attack 17 years prior and finds himself trying to find Christopher after a wealthy man is killed
• Caroline Pettifer – Laurence’s partner for the past three years; has no knowledge of the Shaws’ history
• Michael Hyde – the man who attacked Christopher and seems to be stalking Christopher and Katie again
• Alan Hobbes – adopted into wealth as a young boy, widower, his wife died during childbirth, and his young son was killed in a fire; recent victim of a murder
• Edward Leland – Alan’s older brother, also adopted into a different wealthy family, inherited his adoptive father’s family business

Wow!

So I’ll start with the reason I reduced this by half a star. The cast of characters is confusing and convoluted, spanning multiple generations, and I think unnecessarily complicated. Keep track from the beginning on this one. And then there’s the timeline…or should I say the multiple varied timelines that aren’t clear cut. It’s difficult to follow at times.

Other than that…wow! I will be seeking out Alex North’s books in the future. This story is suspenseful, the characters have great depth, the writing is fast-paced with just the right timing of perspective shifts to keep you reading. Katie is the sister who wants to protect her brother even though he has disappointed her over and over. I loved the partnership of Detectives Page and Pettifer…a very old school/new school vibe. He’s a seasoned detective who has cleared a lot of cases and trusts his gut. She is his young partner who looks for the evidence first.

As a reader, you will have to suspend disbelief (it’s not hard in this case) or at least give in to the possibility of the supernatural, omniscience, predestination. There are elements of all three here. And enjoy the gradual unraveling of the whole story of who the angel makers are and how all of the main characters fit together. About 80% of the way through the book, a pretty big reveal comes into play that makes everything make sense, and I did not want to stop at that point.

I will not give any spoilers here…even mild ones. It was too good getting to that ah-ha moment. What a fantastic read!

---

If you enjoyed this post, please comment below. Subscribe for regular updates, and share it with your friends. If you’re interested in starting a conversation, send an email to booksundertheblanket@gmail.com.

^{As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using the links on my site.}