Killing Time
Linda Howard
Ballantine, June 2005, $25.95, 370 pp.
ISBN 034545345X

By the year 2207, technology for time travel is available but it is strictly monitored and a person must have permission to go back in time. The technology was developed from an item in a time capsule buried in 1985 in a small Kentucky town. When an unauthorized person transits back to 2005 where the time travel is buried, FBI agent Nikita Stover is sent back to retrieve the person and make sure the capsule is buried so that it can be found in the future.

Police officer Knox Davis doesn't believe Nikita is an FBI agent so she has to show him things that don't exist in his time to prove she is a time traveller and a Fed from 2207. The person who came to 2005 from the future is killing people who witnessed the burying of the time capsule and is trying to terminate Nikita. She believes there is a traitor in her agency but the biggest danger is not to her life but to her heart because she is falling for Knox who is beginning to love her and is desperate to keep her alive. Nikita is afraid that when she tells him the truth about her origins, he will turn away from her in disgust.

This is a very different type of thriller that Linda Howard has written, one that involves time travel and a heroine who is not an alpha. She is a vulnerable woman, unsure of herself but she has courage and the ability to adapt to an environment that is very alien to her. There is plenty of action in KILLING TIME but the strength of this novel lies in the developing relationship of the two protagonists.

Harriet Klausner