Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: September 1920, New York City: Phillipa D’Arco makes a living investigating the past for the United States Government. Bloodless, they call her, making her one of the best operatives. So, when Phillipa fails to return back to 2057 to report her findings, Assistant Attorney General Preston Lane needs to make a decision: send in yet another investigator or lose a valuable asset.

Whatever Lane decides, he knows he’ll face consequences. But the truth behind Phillipa’s disappearance will cause ripples in time Lane can’t begin to imagine.

This story is available free at Kristine Rusch's website until 21 September 2014.

My Review: A time-travel short story that gave me enough to get a taste for more. I like the Federal Department of Time, our gummint's controlling agency for criminal activity in the time line; and I was very interested in the competing parties' identities. Being a short story, there was not a lot of room to make fully realized characters. I was left wanting more of Philippa's take on her In Time (analogous to In Country) job's realities, the stinks and the sexism and the like, because what I did get made me think she's a pistol. Turning someone high-powered loose on the past makes for some fun moments.

And there's a clever little trap door set into the piece that allows for, demand being there, more stories with Philippa in them. I'm casting my vote "yes" because there is a sense, after reading this short work, that there's a lot going on in this storyverse and inside the head and heart of a "bloodless" woman.


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