Leap Years

Being a fan, myself, of time-travel mysteries, I was intrigued to discover that California author Julie McElwain (Shadows in Time) had collected some of her favorite such yarns for CrimeReads. Included among her half-dozen picks are Dean Koontz’s Lightning, Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls, and Stephen King’s 11/22/63.

Curiously absent from her recommendations, though, are Karl Alexander’s Time After Time (1979), in which 19th-century science-fictionist H.G. Wells travels to late-20th-century San Francisco in hot pursuit of Jack the Ripper, and Jack Finney’s Time and Again (1970), wherein an advertising artist leaps back to 1882 New York City on the trail of a much-damaged letter penned that very year.