Sweterlitsch says The Gone World was inspired partly by chatting with his brother-in-law, an NCIS agent.

His brother-in-law said that it would be interesting to investigate crimes by jumping forward in time to question witnesses after the heat of the moment has passed, then jumping back and applying their testimony to the investigation.

Moss hops between 1997 and 2015 a handful of times, encountering wildly different futures as her immediate investigation progresses.

She quickly discovers that there’s more to this murder than meets the eye. The suspected killers are connected to some serious anti-government movements, including several terrorist attacks — and they seem to be the crew of the vanished Libra.

The Gone World is a brilliant, complicated novel about the consequences of time travel