This is a highly entertaining time-travel series by a British writer.  The premise is that there is St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research where the resident historians actually time travel in order to accurately record historical events.  But that cold and boring little sentence, in no way, properly conveys the actual madness and insanity that accompanies those little trips.  While time itself has certain safeguards to prevent messing with the timeline; St. Mary's also has rules in place about what can and cannot be done.  And the Historians do try to follow those rules…mostly.

After the debacle of visiting London to identify Jack-the-Ripper, and then bringing back an invisible stowaway in their pod, Maxwell and Kal have quite a bit of recuperating to do.  But when Chief Farrell is almost immediately kidnapped and taken to the future, there isn't any more time to spend in bed; especially alone.  Their old nemesis, Clive Ronan, had apparently attacked St. Mary's in the future (he has a personal grudge as he believes the Institute to be responsible for the death of a woman he loved.)  After some appropriate mayhem, Max ends up as the Caretaker Director while that St. Mary's gets back on its collective feet.

In the aftermath of what was essentially a massacre of St. Mary's personnel, Max has a huge job of un-demoralizing the survivors so she does what any self-respecting Historian would do: organize a fun mission.  It involves dodos.  Who grockle.  And are stupider than advertised. That one actually went okay; it was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon that ended up being a bit more than a walk in the garden.

When Max, Tim and the Chief return to the 'present', the Director decrees that Max and the Chief are way overdue for some R&R and, possibly, some headshrinking so he books them into a posh resort for celebrities recovering from whatever and where the Doctor is actually familiar with St. Mary's specific…issues.  Unfortunately, as is usually the case with St. Mary's, the Doctor isn't who or what Director Bairstow believes him to be.  He actually accomplishes more evil than Clive Ronan or the vicious Bitch Isabella ever did.  He destroys Max's love for Farrell; and she destroys the car.

And then they're off again on a mission to stop the predations of Ronan before they begin; a kind of do-we-kill-Hitler-when-he's-a-baby sort of thing.  The machinations of this mission were just all kinds of fun; and not all of it was Max's fault…really. But if they don't stop Ronan, he may actually manage to change history.  The challenge is, of course, to stop him without damaging him or the subsequent timelines where he's already interacted with St. Mary's.  Not damaging people and property is not exactly St. Mary's forte.

I have to get out the thesaurus to find descriptive words that are different from my last review; and with the number of books already written in this series, I foresee future difficulties.  It's a madcap, roller-coaster sort of adventure story…wait, I think I used "madcap" already, drat.  It's organized insanity and chaos…yes, that's better.  And it is probably the snarkiest dialogue I've ever read. The author doesn't really worry much about character development; they're on their own.  And the plot is also pretty loose; but since St. Mary's likes it that way the gentle reader just has to go along for the ride.  It's crack for a reader who needs a palate-cleanser.  It won't hurt, I promise.  Just read them.  ~~  Catherine Book

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