To be honest, we’re not even sure that
Jim Kelly is an Irish crime writer, but with a name like that he’d probably end up captaining the Irish football team under the grandparent ruling were he a ball-botherer. In saying that, the main reason he’s getting a plug is that Penguin UK sent us a couple of freebie books – without us having to ask! Oh, the glamour of it all … Anyhoo,
The Skeleton Man (published in hardback on July 5) is the fifth in Kelly’s Philip Dryden series, in which Dryden, a journo, puts his investigative skills to good use whenever a murder crops up on his beat. Meanwhile, last year’s The Coldest Blood takes its paperback bow on the same day, and arrives bearing a “significant new talent” cover blurb courtesy of the Sunday Times. “This is another winner in what has become one of the best British crime series on the market. Kelly should be read as much for his Dickensian atmosphere … and his full-throttle characterizations as for his masterful plotting,” says Connie Fletcher at Booklist,
via
Amazon.com, where you’ll also find this – “The language Kelly uses is wonderful … The Coldest Blood reads like a very well done true crime story - the people are that real, the motives that true.” – and this – “The mystery is solidly complex ... Kelly’s writing imbues the unforgiving landscape and the cold itself with personality while Dryden’s wry outlook and innate compassion keep it all from being in the least depressing.” Which is nice …
To be honest, we’re not even sure that Jim Kelly is an Irish crime writer, but with a name like that he’d probably end up captaining the Irish football team under the grandparent ruling were he a ball-botherer. In saying that, the main reason he’s getting a plug is that Penguin UK sent us a couple of freebie books – without us having to ask! Oh, the glamour of it all … Anyhoo, The Skeleton Man (published in hardback on July 5) is the fifth in Kelly’s Philip Dryden series, in which Dryden, a journo, puts his investigative skills to good use whenever a murder crops up on his beat. Meanwhile, last year’s The Coldest Blood takes its paperback bow on the same day, and arrives bearing a “significant new talent” cover blurb courtesy of the Sunday Times. “This is another winner in what has become one of the best British crime series on the market. Kelly should be read as much for his Dickensian atmosphere … and his full-throttle characterizations as for his masterful plotting,” says Connie Fletcher at Booklist, 
via Amazon.com, where you’ll also find this – “The language Kelly uses is wonderful … The Coldest Blood reads like a very well done true crime story - the people are that real, the motives that true.” – and this – “The mystery is solidly complex ... Kelly’s writing imbues the unforgiving landscape and the cold itself with personality while Dryden’s wry outlook and innate compassion keep it all from being in the least depressing.” Which is nice …
I liked the first few books by Jim Kelly (I think I've probably only read three not four, though, so must check that out). In some ways I think the first is the best as it has the most muscular plot (hope that adjective does not sound pretentious but I can't think of a more apt one), but his writing confidence improves with subsequent books. However, as the story of the protag's life develops, the reader feels the storyline of the wife, etc, is running out of steam a bit.
ReplyDeleteLeaping off at a tangent, that's why I am keen to read Giles Blunt's next (am waiting for the pb), but I have just clicked from reading this post that you are only wriring about Irish fiction so I guess that lets old Tundra Blunt out of the pic.