What would you choose to see if you could have one moment of history played out in front of your eyes? One of the great benefits of the distant future is that time travel is a part of everyday life, where you can travel to any point in the distant past as long as you obey the basic rules: don’t do anything to cross your own timeline – the butterfly effect; if you don’t know what is about to happen, then it you

What do the citizens of the distant future want to see in the past? Great moments of history? The first or last Beatles concert? VE celebrations at the end of World War II? Surprisingly, they want to see 21st-century shopping malls, all very routine, ordinary and stultifyingly dull for the guides. Tri-Millennium Travel arranges everything: the resort, the bus trip and the guide who speaks the local language, Modern. The tour company give the guide cheat sheets, the history of the day from start to finish according to the records so he can let events play out but make sure everyone is safe.

Every trip goes to the same day and the same location, so when the expected accident between the bus and a local car occurs no-one is surprised, except the guide who realises this time he has lost a tourist at the mall, one who didn’t get back on the bus. He is sent back to the past again to find someone he cannot locate who may well hold the key to his future as well as that of his world. You cannot escape the past if everyone already knows what will happen in the future.

Dickinson’s novel immerses you. It can require concentration to keep up with the flow of the story but it’s worth the effort for readers who love a good time travel mystery.

Reviewed by David Johnson