Jim Kelly has been around for a while, his first novel being published in 2003, but he is a recent find for me. I have my Amazon account set to send me their Kindle Daily Deal offers by email. Most of the time, it is not of any interest to me, but I get enough hits that it is worth receiving the email. I’m not of a mind to buy something just because it is cheap; but I like to look at it, and see if it is something I might have bought anyway. This often has me discover new (for me) authors.
So when Kindle offered three crime novels by an established author set in this part of the country, for 99p each, I thought it must be worth looking at. I bought the first in the series, and after reading 3 chapters, bought the other two books on offer.
Death Wore White was first published in 2008, and is the first of Kelly’s second series of novels. Set in a slightly fictionalised North Norfolk, the series features DI Peter Shaw, a man with a past (as is often the case). His father was also a copper, but retired in disgrace over the allegedly mishandling of a case. Shaw now finds himself partnered with his father’s old partner, which is uncomfortable for both of them.
The novel has twists and turns but largely involves a locked room mystery, where the “room” is actually a queue of cars, trapped in a snow-bound road. One of the drivers turned out to have been killed, and yet none of the other drivers witnessed anything, and there are no tracks in the snow. The police are baffled, and their crime scene is melting.
Kelly’s other series is set in Ely, also quite local to here. Should keep me busy for a while.
I’ve read several of the Ely series, and enjoyed them (including trying to work out which bits of local landscape are real), but I can see why he might decide to move onto a new protagonist. But I now see there are more recent books in the Philip Dryden/Ely series than I realised, so I’m wrong about it being closed after all….
(I’ve read the first two DI Peter Shaw books.)