Debut sci-fi detective tale from SW Strackbein

 

The Change Paradox

SW Strackbein
Time travel detective fiction
Sisyphus Triumphant Publishing

October 16, 2023

SW Strackbein

Ebook $3.99
Print $16.99

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About the Book

How do you stop someone who could go back and kill you before you’d know who he was?

At age ten, Katheryn Sanders watched her brother die. Gunned down in a filthy alley by an unknown assailant for reasons that have yet to be determined. Nearly forty years later she’s a prominent detective for the Chicago PD. But for all her success, her most significant unsolved case continues to haunt her. She has yet to find her brother’s killer.

As Sanders delves into her latest case, she’s drawn back by connections to her own past. A futuristic bullet matching the one that killed her brother and a wealthy industrialist claiming he travels through time.

Add that to a trio of assassins alleged to be the same person and a college professor who can appear in two places at once and Detective Sanders has her work cut out for her. Only when she’s willing to consider the impossible will she uncover the truth behind her brother’s murder and stop a time-traveling sociopath bent on revenge before he destroys all time and space.

My review

The Change Paradox is a gritty futuristic hard-boiled detective adventure with plenty of deep-seated angst about the past and a desperate need to uncover the truth of the present while saving the future. Sanders is a detective with all the right gifts who knows all the right buttons to push to annoy the powers that be in her Chicago-based police district. Fortunately, despite her idiosyncrasies, she’s good at her job. The one unsolved crime that haunts her happened in front of her face during her childhood. It turns her into a determined hot mess and when her current case intersects with the past, and she throws herself into a pitched battle with time itself against a crazed inventor who’s beyond reason.

Told through the lens of multiple characters, some whose stories you believe and others are questionable, this twisty tale cracks new puzzles with each revelation. Sanders walks a big fat line of edgy, self-destruction as she works her cases which will either endear or turn off fans—sometimes at the same time. A great debut from an up-and-coming author, this story will hit a high note for fans of time-travel, and detective adventures.

About the Author

SW Strackbein has been writing fiction since 2006. A US Army veteran, he is currently a psychotherapist. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, he appreciates the simplicity of the Midwest, Green Bay Packer’s football, and all four seasons. He and his wife Tanya live in a semi-rural town with their dogs Amber and Jax, both young-at-heart rescues. He loves to cook, travel, and dreams about retiring in Hawaii.