Between Times

A whodunit set on New Hampshire’s seacoast.It might look like the Wentworth by the Sea Hotel, but the setting for this work of fiction is called the Smythe Hotel. There unwinds a tale of mystery and murder that spans two worlds — worlds that exist decades apart.In the book “Sumner Island” [Publishing Works Inc., $24.95] author Michael Cormier takes the main character — Mitch or Jerry, depending upon which time period he happens to be in — through what is called “a tear in the membrane” or an “earthly wormhole” back to 1924.In that year at that hotel Maria Boudreau — young, beautiful, wealthy and sought-after — is attacked in her room and left to die in the resulting fire.The story is a classic whodunit, except for the added interest of Mitch/Jerry following clues — and Maria — from one time to the other and back again. The to-ing and fro-ing gets a little tiresome, but Cormier writes well and his long descriptive passages paint pictures that hold your interest.The unusual plot stretches credulity at points, but then it is a book about transprogression, where instead of being reincarnated into a new life, the book explains, “the same life is reborn someplace else or sometime else into the same person.”As it says in the book, “Got it?”