Nightrise

December 10, 2012
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.

December 15, 2012
Cambridgeshire reporter Philip Dryden (The Skeleton Man, 2008, etc.) returns to solve the mystery of his father's death--an especially challenging case, considering that the old man apparently died twice. Jack Dryden was swept away while making a gallant, futile attempt to protect the city of Ely from the calamitous floods of 1977. So how is it that his body's just been discovered burned to death in a car accident? The corpse's fiery fate would make exact identification difficult even for people who'd seen Jack in the past 30 years. But the general description and the dental work both confirm what his identification papers assert: He's Jack Dryden. His son, consumed with skepticism and curiosity, would love to devote every waking moment to solving the mystery. But his attention is claimed by two other problems: the death of Fen Rivers Water Authority bailiff Rory Setchey, who seems to have been hung from a gantry, already dead, and then shot several times, and the West Fen District Council's refusal to release the body of Aque, the infant daughter of David and Gillian Yoruba, to her heartbroken parents. Since David is facing deportation to Niger and Dryden has just become a father himself, he feels especially close to the grieving parents. He can't imagine that his three cases will turn out to be connected by a long-standing conspiracy as simple and clever as it is monstrous. Even if they never came up with such a diabolical plot, long-winded colleagues could well take example from the generosity and economy with which Kelly (Death's Door, 2012, etc.) spins his web.

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February 1, 2013

In journalist Phillip Dryden's sixth outing (after 2007's The Skeleton Man), he works to find ties between two seemingly unrelated cases: a possible gang killing and a baby burial gone wrong. A third twist comes when the police inform Phillip that his father was killed in a car accident--except his father drowned 35 years ago.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2012
Kelly's latest in his popular Philip Dryden series is powerful and deeply affecting, with enough unusual twists to keep even seasoned mystery fans guessing. British journalist Dryden is euphoric over the birth of his first child. But the euphoria is short-lived when the police inform Dryden that his father, who disappeared in 1977, has just died in a violent car crash. The information produces strange and conflicting emotions in Dryden, but even these must be put on hold when his policeman friend alerts him that a body has been found hanging from a watering gantry in a field on the fens. Then a second body turns up, and Dryden also finds himself involved in investigating the death of the baby daughter of a soon-to-be-deported African immigrant. Using his reporter's nose for news and his unerring way of ferreting out the truth, Dryden eventually discovers a dark secret that links all three cases and even ties into his own father's death. A not-to-be-missed book, both for the gripping story and for Kelly's expressive, engaging writing style.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)