Chances are an undying close to the events would simply know, immediately, exactly what was happening and there would be no mystery to unravel. But not our Chance. No, Chance - and "Trickster," his brother - are not your typical undying, but are half undying and half human, having had their undying essence pared down by Patience, an ancient undying and their creator... you might call their mother. As being only half undying, they have supernatural powers, but don't have full access to and understanding of all of the events that they have experienced / had experienced / will have had experienced.
These limitations necessitate that Chance must pull Miranda, a lawyer who has familiarity with a certain series of murders and the corresponding case files, to boot, from the timeline and into a pocket dimension and seek her assistance in sleuthing out who is actually behind the murders and what their significance may be / may have been / may will have had been. Of course, Miranda is simply a human, so she has no supernatural powers, but she does have a keen mind for observations. Chance will have to help her work through her memories of the events she's witnessed and pore through her files for them to work the clues and determine who or what is behind the chilling murders and why. And there's also the fact that she seems vaguely familiar to Chance, so of course, there's always the possibility that Miranda might have been important to Chance for some other reason... or might have had been in the future...
If you're a fan of detective stories, you're very aware of the importance of establishing a timeline. This can be an interesting challenge with events that have / had / will have had happened and time being a bit wibbley-wobbley. Still, whereas a lot of books with simple linear stories that attempt to foreshadow some twists here or there seem to me to give away all of the secrets, Unraveling not only had a few details I guessed close to, but was a bit off and some that I didn't see coming at all, but also one twist that I'm pretty sure I saw, but I'm not entirely sure it was intended or recognized by the author, herself, as it wasn't explicitly recognized after it had occurred. At any rate, the story was fast-paced and interesting and the characters are endearing. Further, while there's no indication that Unraveling is to be part of a series, the end of the book works equally as well as an end of a story and the beginning of something new, so who knows.
If you're looking for a book that works well as a treatise on what it would mean to be an undying and to trace and retrace over a tapestry of timespace, not constrained by time - or you're looking for a who-dun-what mystery that you could curl up with and read - perhaps more than once - then Karen Lord's Unraveling might be a good choice for you. If you're interested in getting your hands on both? Then it's very highly recommended, indeed.
