Red Shift expresses the significance of place and the insignificance of time…. The significance of place is established through setting the narrative in three different periods in the history of a few square miles of Cheshire countryside around the village of Barthomley, Mow Cop and Crewe: the insignificance of time is suggested by the way the author interweaves the narrative's contemporary strand about the relationship of Tom and Jan, with the story of Thomas and the other villagers from the seventeenth century and that of Macey and his splinter group of Roman soldiers from the Ninth Legion. The shifts from one strand to another are managed skilfully such that while one is kept busy associating characters and relationships, noticing the common thread of violence, responding to the tangible link of the stone axe-head which is handed from one time level into the next, yet the three narrative lines...