2026 06 20 Review of The Atomograph by Des Duffy Published by Sportsweek.


Reviewed for NetGalley



This is a short science fiction novel. It is written in an engaging, tense and gritty style that grabbed my attention. 

The main concept is one that has been touched on by a number of writers and thinkers: if you could change history, what would you do? 



The eponymous Atomograph is a device which allows its wearer to move in time and make ‘adjustments’ that alter the course of events. From the start, it becomes clear that these adjustments may be drastic, bloody and utilitarian. 



The author, Des Duffy, describes the actions of his main protagonist, Joe Cartigan, who is recruited by a mysterious organisation which supplies the device and trains its agents in its use. Once trained, he is deployed in actions that ultimately result in lives saved somewhere down the timeline. But these actions are by no means bloodless and described in a brutal manner that might leave you stunned. I wondered if the author had some real-life experience in such events - boxing, brawling and combat situations.



The culmination of the novel is one that seems to move from taking a few lives to save many to ensuring an event that results in thousands of deaths to go ahead.

Duffy leaves a number of questions unanswered. Questions such as the nature of the organisation who recruits Cartigan, who runs it and who is his handler. The main one we are left with is why so many innocent deaths were seen as desirable. And these are questions that I hope will be answered in further novels in this series. 



But there are others: those which have troubled thinkers in the time-travel field and in counterfactual history. If something has already happened in the past, can it be changed? If it has been changed, how would anyone have known it had happened? What would be the ethical conundrums involved? 



In summary, I found this to be a gripping and engaging book. Some of the issues raised will, I am sure, be answered in the following books. It seemed, however, that the paradoxes and implications raised by the possibility of time-travel were insufficiently addressed, even at this early stage. 




Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Sportsweek, for providing me with a copy of this book.

Des Duffy has a strong writing style and am excited for more in this series and from the author. This was a strong start to the Lawmanseries, it had that element that I was looking for and thought worked as a thriller novel. The characters were wonderfully done and worked in this universe. It was suspenseful and was everything that I was looking for from this description.