"The Time-Travelling Estate Agent" by Dale Bradford

This book is an entertaining blend of time travel, historical fiction and whodunnit.

In December 2019, Eric Meek is a meek estate agent who discovers a portal in the space-time continuum which can transport him back in time. The catch is that the portal is tethered to just before 1PM on Saturday 3rd July 1976, the hottest day of a heat wave (I was working in a cold store at the time!), the day that Bjorn Borg defeated Ilie Nastase to win his first Wimbledon championship, and the worst day of Eric’s life when he lost his girlfriend, Verity, to bully Len Butcher, a trauma which has blighted his life ever since. It’s also the day his father’s shop is burgled and Verity and Len disappear. So we have a mix of time travel with Groundhog Day. Eric repeatedly goes back to try to change things (fortunately the ‘tethered’ portal stays open until he chooses to return) but is frustrated by the rules of time travel which mean that whatever he does will not affect the future and won’t even be remembered by the participants. To start with he gets into quite a lot of fights, often triggered by the atrociously sexist male chauvinism regarded as normal in 1976, and occasionally he enjoys romantic relations but gradually he endeavours to right wrongs (the portal is increasingly like the telephone box in which mild-mannered Clark Kent turns into Superman). This mission comes into sharper focus when a body is discovered in 2019 and Eric tries to discover whodunnit in 1976.

Meanwhile in 2019, business is bad, the bank wants to review his overdraft, and he is being stalked for takeover by an online estate agency. He starts realising that he has wasted his (mostly loveless) life and so has Carol, his receptionist, who was involved in whatever happened in 1976. He wants to make amends.

If the portal put me in mind of Superman, there was also a hint of James Bond in the way that the narrator gives the details of the cars (mostly posh) and the wines and the brands of smartphones and specific record tracks. This felt like garnish. Far more impressive were the descriptions of the clothes, the groceries, the beers and all the furnishings of everyday life in 1976; this overwhelming level of specifics added an impressive depth of verisimilitude. And the fact that Eric couldn't walk by a house without mentally exploring it and valuing it added credence to the idea that he was an estate agent. But surely even estate agents occasionally eat at home.

Eric's character and those of Carol and Simon/Seb were nicely drawn and given nuance and depth. This made the portrayal of the villains disappointing. It was difficult to suspend disbelief when Alwyn repeatedly flouted direct orders. Eric's dad was two-dimensionally stupid. PC Tanner, Big Ben Butcher, Little Len and Elvis were all too bad to ring true. 

There were one or two loose ends. More could have been made of Jason Mason, that plot line seemed to be incomplete. Was the killer brought to justice? If Carol disappeared from the hotel just after the end of the Borg-Nastase match how could she still be there in the evening? 

Nevertheless this was a well-written and entertaining read.

Selected quotes: 

• “Maybe there really was a danger of death in that garage,” Eric said, “and I’m reliving parts of my life as I die.” If that was the case, he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. If his highlights reel had been a movie genre, it certainly wouldn’t have been ‘action’." (Ch 3)
• “I’m so charming I’m like charmageddon,” (Ch 4)
• “I don’t see the point of holidays,” Freeman said. “Why pay to sleep in someone else’s bed when it will inevitably be inferior to your own?” (Ch 4)
• "Are you familiar with the concept of the multiverse or the many-worlds interpretation?” “Are you familiar with the fact that I’m an estate agent?" (Ch 5)
• “Why do you look back so much?” Seb asked. “That’s not the direction you’re going in.” (Ch 17)
• "Eric could have picked a worse day to drive to Bath but only if he had really, really tried." (Ch 23)
• “When a door is firmly closed, it might just need a good bang to get it open again.” (Ch 24)

April 2023

I read the independently published e-book on kindle.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God