Death Wore White

Starred review from April 6, 2009
Twists pile on twists in Kelly’s superb whodunit, the possible first in a series. Soon after Det. Insp. Peter Shaw and Det. Sgt. George Valentine, who had been the partner of Shaw’s disgraced policeman father, stumble on a corpse on an inflatable raft on a Norfolk beach, the pair are stuck in a blizzard, their car one of many vehicles blocked by a fallen tree. During this mishap, someone kills Harvey Ellis, the driver nearest the obstruction, with a chisel blow to the eye and manages to escape without leaving traces in the snow. Other bodies surface after the police extricate themselves from the scene of Ellis’s murder. While Shaw and his team try to untangle the lies told them by every witness they encounter, he also tries to redeem his late father’s reputation by reopening the child murder case that brought his father down. Kelly (The Skeleton Man
), winner of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award, maintains the suspense throughout.

Starred review from April 1, 2009
An impossible crime is just one of the outrages confronting DI Peter Shaw, here partnered with old-timer George Valentine.

The detour leads to a side road that leads to a felled tree that leads to a lineup of eight blocked vehicles. The first driver is dead, a screwdriver in his eye. When another driver walks over to him, he's so horrified that his heart gives out, and Shaw, hurrying over from examining a drum full of toxic waste and a dead body buffeted on a raft half a mile away, has to radio for help. Detail-oriented Shaw's opposite is George Valentine, his deceased father's former partner, who's waiting out his retirement and the bad reputation the pair got for blowing the Tessier case years ago. Though there'll be another violent death, the first one presents the most perplexing clues. No footprints lead to or from the murdered man's door except those of the heart-attack victim. The passenger who presumably nibbled an apple has vanished. Detour signs have come and gone without official sanction. But Shaw, who had a problematic relationship with his father, is determined not only to solve this new mystery but to resurrect the old Tessier case and rehabilitate the old man's memory.

Stunning in plot and delivery, with fluid, visceral prose. Few puzzle solvers will unravel this one before the wind-up, and awards committees will be queuing up to honor this second case for Shaw (The Skeleton Man, 2008).

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from June 1, 2009
Detective Inspector Peter Shaw and Detective Sargeant George Valentine are on a Norfolk beach looking for a drum filled with toxic waste when they stumble upon a murdered man in a boat. At the same time, a sudden snowstorm traps several cars on a coastal road, and the lead driver is found stabbed to death. There are no footprints leading to or from the car, and the stranded motorists are a motley crew with no apparent reasons to kill the man. Are the two deaths connected? Kelly, winner of the 2006 CWA Dagger in the Library award for his reporter Philip Dryden series ("The Skeleton Man, The Coldest Blood"), launches a new series introducing two officers often at odds with each other: Valentine, a rising star in the West Norfolk Constabulary until he made a life-changing mistake, and Shaw, the youngest DI on the force and the son of Valentine's former partner. VERDICT Kelly demonstrates his mastery at creating a convoluted puzzle that must be sorted out by even more complicated detectives. An excellent choice for fans of British police procedurals and "locked-room" mysteries.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2009
British writer Kelly, author of the Philip Dryden series, sets his latest psychological suspense tale along the wind-whipped Norfolk Coast during a particularly scathing snowstorm that strands dozens of motorists. Two cops from the Norfolk Constabulary have answered a call from HM Coast Guard about a sighting of toxic waste near Scolt Head Island. They also spot the body of a man drifting ashore. Within minutes, the cops have found another bodythis one in a car, a chisel protruding from his left eye socket. These discoveries lead the reader into myriad hidden crimes, including a far-flung network of animal trafficking. Slowing down the pace considerably is Kellys attention to the uneasy (and clich'd) relationship between the starring cops: the young detective inspector Peter Shaw and his fathers old partner, the grizzled detective sergeant George Valentine. Except for this hackneyed subplot, this is a fine thriller, in terms of both atmosphere and suspense.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)