There are always problems with time travels which involve real histories, and The Devil on the Road does not escape them, though Westall handles the transitions with great subtlety and skill. But the writing is so charged and vigorous, the timing of the plot so carefully measured, that the customary difficulties are minimized.

John Webster seems very real indeed, and likable; and even better, there is a young cat, deeply involved in the story and central to it, who is surely one of the best and most charmingly drawn cats I've ever encountered in a book. Her presence in the story does for it what real cats can do for real life—she is all animal but still profoundly enigmatic, a creature of many wisdoms, a link between the known and the unknown. As such she epitomizes the story itself in all of its convolutions. The author is...