Booklog 58/2024: Killing Time - Time Police #5

[jacey]

Team 236 (Team Weird) Matthew Farrell, Jane Lockland and Luke Parrish, are barely talking to each other after their adventures and the revelations in the previous two books (Hard Time, and About Time). Jane and Lt Grint are still dancing around each other, a mixture of attraction, insecurity and embarrassment. Mikey (Amanda Meiklejohn) is now doing research for the Time Police, and her experiment with rapid-hardening string leaves a good proportion of officers temporarily encased, so when two teenagers are reported to have built a pod and gone trainspotting to Rome in 1911, Team 235 is called to action. The train being spotted is the notorious Zanetti train which left Rome, entered a tunnel and was never seen again. Things get complicated when Sawney, a misogynistic ex-Time Police Officer who has bad history with Jane, turns up. He and the boys, plus Jane and Luke end up on board the doomed train, which is destined to bounce around the timeline like a runaway ghost train. This book is mostly a linear story of the train, Luke and Jane's attempts to get off it, Matthew's adventures in the Time map, trying to discern its whereabouts (and whenabouts), and Lt Grint's Team 236, efforts hurtling after the train to rescue their missing officers. (Though, let's face it, Grint is mostly about rescuing Jane and if he saves Luke as well, no harm done.) A straightforward story which enhances the relationship between Team Weird and Grint, who is possibly not as dumb as he has appeared to be in the past, and also reveals a secret that the TP is hiding which sows a little seed for the future. Another excellent book from Jodi Taylor.