An Ordinary Sort of Evil (A Rip Through Time 5) by Kelley Armstrong-review
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date May 18, 2026
Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Mitchell has grown accustomed to life in Victorian Scotland after travelling 150 years into the past into the body of a housemaid. She’s built a new life for herself. Even though she works as an assistant to forensic-science pioneer Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie, she considers them true friends. And with Gray in particular, perhaps, someday, something more.
Late one night, Gray and Mallory are summoned urgently to the home of Lady Adler, a patron of Gray’s undertaking business, and they assume there’s been a death in the household. But instead, they arrive in the midst of a seance with a ghost demanding Gray’s presence. The ghost is Lady Adler’s former maid, who had gone missing but now requests that Gray investigate her murder. Although Gray and Mallory are skeptical, they agree to look into the matter, whether she’s dead or alive. But unsure if there’s been a murder or not, unable to call out the medium as a fraud, and concerned for the fate of the young maid, Gray and Mallory are once again drawn into a mystery much more puzzling–and more dangerous–than it first seems.
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REVIEW:AN ORDINARY SORT OF EVIL is the fifth instalment in Kelley Armstrong’s adult A RIP THROUGH TIME time travel, mystery series focusing on thirty year old, Vancouver, Canada Police Detective Mallory Atkinson, and undertaker/investigator Dr. Duncan Gray. AN ORDINARY SORT OF EVIL can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty but I recommend reading book one for back story and cohesion.
SOME BACKGROUND: In the spring of 2019 while visiting her ailing grandmother in Edinburgh Scotland, thirty year old, Vancouver British Columbia, Canada police detective Mallory Atkinson is attacked in an alley only to wake up as a nineteen year old housemaid in the year 1869, a housemaid who was also attacked and left for dead in the same alley where Mallory was found. Not only has our heroine time travelled back one-hundred and fifty years but she is no longer physically the same woman she was just minutes before. Working as a housemaid for Dr. Duncan Gray and his sister Isla, realizing life as she knew it was no longer under her control, Mallory must assume the position of nineteen year old Catriona Mitchell, a young woman whose history is questionable and dark.
Told from first person perspective (Mallory) AN ORDINARY SORT OF EVIL finds Mallory and Dr. Gray on the hunt for a missing person. A séance has revealed the possibility of murdered sixteen year old housemaid named Nellie, a young woman who has been missing for several days. With no body and no clues, Mallory will begin to interview all of the people connected to the young woman, a young woman few knew anything about. As the rumors build, Mallory and Dr. Gray amass several suspects, and more bodies.
Meanwhile, Mallory and Duncan’s attraction to one another is growing, and as Duncan’s housemaid / assistant her presence in the house is never questioned but in the 1870s, a single woman must keep up appearances, and their relationship slowly begins to build.
There is a large ensemble cast of colorful, questionable and engaging secondary and supporting characters including potential suspects and several witnesses who all have a different story to tell. We are reintroduced to Dr. Duncan Gray’s sister Isla, Detective Hugh McCreadie, parlor-maid Alice, and new maid Jack
AN ORDINARY SORT OF EVIL is a story of secrets and lies, betrayal, mystery, death and jealousy, family and friendships, relationships and love. The slow building premise is intriguing and suspenseful; the characters are determined and dynamic.
Copy supplied for review
Reviewed by Sandy
