cover image Nightrise

Nightrise

Jim Kelly. Severn/Creme de la Crime, $28.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-78029-033-1

Near the outset of Kelly’s elegantly plotted sixth mystery set in Ely, England (after 2008’s The Skeleton Man), journalist Philip Dryden receives a shock. After Dryden’s paper, The Crow, carries a single paragraph about a fiery auto accident with one unidentified victim, his friend Det. Sgt. Stan Cherry informs him that the man has been identified as his father, John Dryden, previously believed lost during flooding in 1977. Awaiting definitive DNA results, Dryden sets off to find more information about the father he barely knew. Two other incidents capture Dryden’s attention: the murder of a man found hanging from an irrigation gantry and riddled with bullets, and the loss of a child’s body intended for burial. Dryden discovers surprising links between these separate events, placing himself and his family in danger. Kelly makes superb use of Fens geography and history in an entry that should give new life to the Philip Dryden series. Agent: Faith Evans, Faith Evans Associates. (Feb.)