Wrong Place Wrong Time

Jen becomes an amateur sleuth during her time-traveling journey. At the beginning of the novel, she blames Todd’s killing of Jones on her “bad” mothering. As the novel progresses, she realizes that Todd didn’t kill Jones because of her. She learns to pay attention to her environment and be in the moment; in the process, she recognizes The Rewards of Motherhood and her own capacity for maternal love.

Jen admits that she was hardly ready to be a mother. Having postpartum depression, she returned to lawyering grateful not to have to confront what she saw as her poor mothering. In her conversations with Professor Vettese, Jen acknowledges her guilt over how little she paid attention to Todd as he grew up: “The birth had been such a mess, the baby years fraught, so busy, Jen felt like she was in a vortex, always something to be doing” (262). Her time loop offers an unexpected blessing: She gets to watch Todd grow up all over again, and this time she pays attention to every detail.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time is a murder mystery, but it is also a journey of Jen’s personal discovery. As she plays with three-year-old Todd, she sees in his eyes how much he loves her, and realizes “that she mothered him well enough” (301). This is a moment of exoneration. She makes peace with herself, and will later make peace with a husband she didn’t really know. Her time loop opens her to love.

To protect the woman he loves, Ryan must pretend to be someone else for more than 20 years. He fakes his own death and assumes the name of his dead brother. Ryan dreams of joining the police force because he wants to help people and do good. When his new job as a police officer offers him little opportunity to help his community, he leaps at the chance to infiltrate Liverpool’s most notorious organized crime ring. His heart, compassionate and generous, complicates his persona as a hardcore cop and later as Jen’s stoic husband.

In her time loop, Jen catches her husband crying. Ryan never gets over the kidnapped baby the police never find. He imagines the baby, far from her mother. Ryan’s character exemplifies the highest virtues of law enforcement: He is courageous, compassionate, caring.

Ryan’s life is shaped in part by his older brother Kelly. Once their father abandoned the family, both brothers struggled to help their mother make ends meet. Kelly turns to petty crimes while Ryan commits to school and then to the police academy. Ryan believes his commitment to helping others as a cop is his way of balancing his family and making up for his delinquent brother, particularly after Kelly’s suicide.

Ryan’s selection of the surname “Brotherhood” indicates his faith in community. He decides to illegally remain Kelly Brotherhood out of love for Jen. His character is shaped by his long charade. He must live with the pressure of his false identity and fear that Jones will come back to destroy him and his family. He creates a complicated web: Indeed, Ryan’s original surname “Hiles” comes from the Spanish “Hilar,” a word that means to weave and embroider.

The reader meets Todd in the opening pages of the novel, when he kills Jones. At the time, neither his mother nor the reader understands what his action means or the heroism it requires. At 18, Todd has a promising life ahead of him and is in love for the first time. In confronting Jones, he sacrifices his future to protect his father and the girl he loves.

The novel reveals Todd’s character through its time loop structure. The reader learns that he is self-sufficient, loving, and protective. He mostly raises himself given his parents’ work schedules, and is wary of attention from Jen since it deviates from what he expects. In Clio/Eve, Todd discovers the possibility of love. He struggles to help his father, who becomes entangled in Jones’s crime ring, and agrees to negotiate with Clio’s uncle to protect him.

The measure of his heroism is revealed in the aftermath of his killing Jones. He readily admits what he did to the police and later declines a lawyer. This protects his father’s real identity from being discovered.