The Paradox Hotel
by Rob Hart
Hardcover, 336 pages
Expected publication: February 22nd 2022
by Ballantine Books
There’s a dead body in room 526 but only January Cole, former time cop and now head of hotel security, can see it. Actually, there’s a lot January can see that others don’t, because she took a few too many trips into the past and, well…this is your brain. this is your brain on too many time trips. She was booted from active TEA missions because she’d reached stage 1 of the brain erosion that’s a side effect of time travel and sent to the hotel where the very wealthy stay before taking their vacations in the past. Time Travel may be a government-controlled operation, but it’s only for the rich. The hotel is located a safe distance from the Einstein timeport, which really should have been named for the black woman who invented time travel, but no, let’s name it after an old dead white guy.
Ahem. OK then. January’s brain is falling apart, which is a little be odd because the hotel should be safe from time radiation but instead she’s beset by grand mal flashbacks where suddenly the past overwrites the present and she’s lost in time, if only for a few seconds, or minutes. Only now she’s seeing future events as well, most of them very, very, bad, the sorts of things she’s supposed to prevent as head of security.
Two things worth knowing about January. 1) she’s angry and defensive and generally hard to get along with, and that was her baseline personality before 2) she fell in love with someone at the hotel who was pretty much her polar opposite, and died in an explosion. Running into her lost love repeatedly through her time slipping brain is a drug she’s addicted to, but one that keeps her from actually processing grief, which makes her even more (See: 1)} she’s angry and…).
The hotel is up for sale because the US Government needs the money, so a quartet of old white male zillionaires are here to haggle over the price. Granted, one is a Saudi crown prince, but let’s count him in any way since he has a history of doing bad things to people without agency, which means he can join the OWG club.
The story. Right. Back to that.
January, and her sidekick Ruby, an A.I. drone she abuses, have to solve the mystery of the body in 526 as well as keep the zillionaire’s from getting knocked off, a project which someone appears to be working on. At the same time the entire hotel is experiencing sudden chronological anomalies, like the sun setting an hour early and ghosts of the hotel designer appearing in the hall. And they have to do it before January gets kicked off the premises for being too far gone, which is due any day now.
I’m not wild about this as a murder mystery. Rob Hart has way too much fun throwing in flashbacks, courtesy of January’s decline, and rather than illuminating the issues at hand they mostly just let her wallow in her grief. As a character study, we get that both her and her dead lover were rejected by their families for being queer and each health with it in different ways. As a class commentary, yes, all Old White Guys, and a fair number of women who’ve played the game to gain power are evil, and only the working class can generate heroes. Hey, I’m not arguing the point, but Hart lays it on a bit thick here.
Fun fact: if you google Paradox Hotel you’re likely to wind up at the Hotel Paradox, a nifty boutique hotel near the beach in Santa Cruz. Be sure to ask the concierge if they have time travel tours…
Official Info: An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake. From the author of The Warehouse . . .
“An engrossing and thought-provoking sci-fi mystery that is also an achingly beautiful meditation on grief and the pain of lost love.”—S. A. Cosby, New York Times bestselling author of Razorblade Tears
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—CrimeReads
January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder.
Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past.
Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls.
None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see.
On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims.
January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders.
There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once.
But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.
At once a dazzlingly time-twisting murder mystery and a story about grief, memory, and what it means to—literally—come face-to-face with our ghosts, The Paradox Hotel is another unforgettable speculative thrill ride from acclaimed author Rob Hart.