She’s back! After finishing the third and final novel in Neve Maslakovic’s Incident trilogy--a brain-tickling, time-traveling, whodunit series--I despaired of ever reading any new stories about unflappable university administrator Julia Olsen again, but she’s back in a new novelette . . . and back in time because it’s a prequel.

Someone in the university's biology department is stealing lunches from the common fridge, a minor but awkward crime for a collegial community of learning, and everyone in the time travel department is placing bets on whether or not physicist Erwin Schrödinger owned a pet cat when he came up with his quantum superposition thought experiment about a simultaneously alive and/or dead feline. A professor and two graduate students are heading back to 1935 to discreetly locate Schrödinger and settle the wagers, but Julia herself doesn’t actually leave the present day in this story since it predates her first trip into History, told in The Far Time Incident.

Even though Julia is only able to fantasize about time travel in The Feline Affair, this novelette will give new readers a good sense of the writing style and tone of the series. For those of us who’ve already enjoyed three full length books, it’s great to be back at St. Sunniva University, and entertaining to see earlier versions of characters we’ve gotten to know well. This series is for readers who like time travel stories peopled with eccentric academic historian types--it has pervasive but subtle humor, space/time conundrums, adventures in interesting historic eras, and just a light, non-torrid background romance.

I read a complimentary ebook copy of this novelette provided by the author with no strings attached. Review opinions are mine. ( )