Gregory Case is an American teaching physics in Oxford. His rather mundane life is turned upside down when he discovers a body, a body which turns out to be his own. His state of confusion continues when he is kidnapped from Earth and taken to Everyman’s Way, a place which not only appears to be displaced in space, but in time as well. His meeting with Father Thomas Toomey sets about a series of adventures which sees our hero mistakenly drinking a love potion and becoming involved in a royal plot...

Mystery of Everyman’s Way is the new book by Paul Collins, who has previously published King Without an Empire. As a writer Collins has come on in leaps and bounds. Mystery holds many good ideas, though good ideas have never been a problem for Collins, as his last book contained too many for its length. Luckily this time Collins has reigned back on the amount that he’s included, which has left more room for character development and plot.

The book starts well with Case finding a hundred and fifty year old version of himself, deceased, apparently having died in painful circumstances. Our hero is further unnerved when a government agent informs him that he has been targeted by aliens for kidnap. When Case gets to Everyman’s Way and meets Father Toomey the plot really takes a ninety degree turn and transforms into a science fiction romance where the story pretty much stays until the denouement - a denouement which is well worth the wait.

Collins has taken a bit of a gamble with what is essentially a science fiction romance. Not a sub-genre which is overflowing with books. Then again there is always a niche market for most sub-genres, so good luck to him.

Of course with most things in life there is a down side. Collins's previous book suffered at the hands of a disinterested publisher, and many of the problems associated with King Without an Empire could be attested to this problem, not so Mystery. So we have a good plot, interesting characters, but the weak point of the book is the tempo of events. Collins seems intent in showing his audience everything and keeping the plot moving at a breakneck speed. This has two main problems, firstly audience like to take time to stand around and smell the roses, as it enables the author to allow his readers a greater length of time to get to know the characters and hopefully to come to care about what happens to them.

Secondly, there are only so many ways to advance time in a book, so a lot of the paragraphs start with “That evening”; “That night”; “The next day” and those three appear on a single page (116) but there are too many instances of this which leaves the audience head spinning at the speed that time is passing. Also, if I could give Collins any advice, it would be to remove the word “suddenly” from most of the book as too many things "suddenly" happen... Slow down.

It's hard to quantify just how different this book is from his previous work, it could almost have been written by a different, more confident author. Now all he needs is a little more polish to perfect his art.

7

Charles Packer