Edgar Award-winner Elly Griffiths's beguiling The Frozen People turns on a captivating dilemma. Fifty-year-old Alison Dawson is a time-traveling cold-case detective in 2023 London with a 30-year-old son, Finn, and three ex-husbands. Alison's government-supported Department of Logistics sends agents back in time to resolve cases "so cold they are frozen"; Finn is special adviser to Tory member of Parliament Isaac Templeton. Mother's and son's work paths cross when self-aggrandizing Templeton, writing a book about his great-great-grandfather, Cain, wants to exonerate him of the murders of three women. The catch: the supposed crimes occurred in the 1850s, and no one in Alison's department has ever traveled back that far.
The clever hook: team members enter past realms through a portal called "the gate." They arrive at a specific spot, mark it with invisible ink, and return to that ingress point to exit. Alison prepares for her Victorian adventure with knee-length bloomers, whalebone corset, and a poke bonnet. What she doesn't prepare for is to be stranded in the January "mini-ice age" blizzard. Expecting to stay an hour in 1850, Alison is trapped for days.
Complications ensue in Alison's home zone when Finn is accused of murder. Griffiths seamlessly shuffles overlapping clues that might solve murders in both time periods. When a dastardly 19th-century culprit uses Alison's portal, he may be loose committing 21st-century crimes. Thrills mount as readers follow the team's amazing race against time. The totally unexpected and head-spinning solution makes for an engagingly impressive whendunit. --Robert Allen Papinchak, freelance book critic