It’s About Time

I’ve said before that mass-market original paperbacks are the Rodney Dangerfields of publishing--they don’t get enough respect. Sure, many of them have cats solving crimes, or they include recipes and tips on everything from quilt-making to home renovation. But many are more than worth the price of entry.

This year, judges in the mystery/thriller category for the annual Los Angeles Times Book Awards--including me--have received several worthy contenders in the mass-market originals category. Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime has given us his own highly amusing publishing “memoir,” Fifty-to-One. And we have under consideration Christa Faust’s sexy and sharp Money Shot, set inside the porno industry, along with the amazing P.J. Parrish’s South of Hell.

Now comes a terrific new contender from T.J. MacGregor, Running Time, which won me over because of my love for time-travel stories. Running Time continues the adventures of Nora McKee, whose involvement with the rigors of traveling through time began in last year’s Kill Time.

Nora was having lunch with her husband, Jake, at their favorite restaurant in Blue River, Massachusetts, and was about to tell him that she wanted a divorce. But then two agents from the thinly disguised Federal Department of Freedom and Security (known as Freeze on the street), who wear uniforms “the color of rich, bitter chocolate,” grab Jake and carry him off to a waiting van, knocking Nora down when she tries to intervene. After that, Jake disappears into the mists of time.

Kill Time and now Running Time take their place on my short list of best time-travel stories, a list that also includes Screenplay, by Macdonald Harris; Time and Again, by Jack Finney; Somewhere in Time, by Richard Matheson; and The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.

As I asked last year, what titles am I missing?