The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch

Richard Doetsch knows how to write a thriller! If you love time travel and crossed timelines, this thriller is told backwards, like the film Memento.

Nick Quinn is arrested for killing his wife. While in detention, a stranger hands him a pocket watch. As long as he is holding the watch when the hour turns over, he will regress one hour backwards. The novel is read backwards in time, reducing hour by hour.

The fascinating effect, besides retaining his memory, is his state when he travels. At one point, he is chained to a weight at the bottom of a river, looking at previous victims floating beside him and running out of breath. He can't get loose, but time jumps back an hour, to his home study, soaking wet from the river.

As well as murder, there is a vault heist of rare treasures by unknown thieves, and a spectacular plane crash when a Cessna collides with a commercial flight filled with 200 passengers. Can Nick not only save his wife in 12 hours but also prevent these other events from happening?

He soon realizes whom he can trust, what plans worked and which created more chaos, and what he needs to do to prevent it all from happening in the first place. Written with a fast pace, it manages to include intriguing characters and surprisingly original twists I did not see coming.

A time travel thriller is just what I like, and I wasn't let down! I thought this was ingenious and a real page-turner. Highly recommended.

2009 / Hardcover / 336 pages