The Funeral Owl

October 28, 2013
At the start of Kelly’s busy seventh Philip Dryden mystery (after 2012’s Nightrise), newspaper editor Dryden and his cabbie friend, Humph, are looking for Humph’s missing 15-year-old daughter, Grace, who is found soon after a ferocious dust storm in a remote part of England’s Fen country. Philip considers the storm for a headline, until he visits Christ Church, Brimstone Hill, to do a story on lead theft, and discovers a body hanging on a crucifix. Other local crimes include instances of moonshine poisoning, a cold case involving a series of fatal home invasions, further depredations by the unknown metal thieves, and a fatal explosion. With his perspective, Philip is able to draw conclusions that the local constabulary miss. Kelly pens believable characters amid a rich geography and resists the urge to make every event related. Agent: Faith Evans, Faith Evans Associates.

December 15, 2013
It's open season for disasters, felonies and all manner of malfeasance in Cambridgeshire in journalist Philip Dryden's seventh outing. Dryden has just been appointed editor of The Crow on the strength of his promise to raise the paper's profile by launching a series of regional editions. The gods of journalism are cooperating by providing enough copy for a dozen editions. A surprisingly well-organized gang has stolen metal from the roof of Christ Church and half a dozen other local sites. Rev. Jennifer Temple-Wright, the vicar, is bent on evicting blind old Albe Haig from his tenancy in a church outbuilding. Inside the church hangs kitchen porter Sima Shuba, shot and crucified. Korean War veteran Jock Donovan swears he can hear excruciating high-pitched noises coming from the wind farm nearby. PC Stokely Powell wants Dryden to look into the murder of Muriel Calder's farmer husband, Ronald, by three art thieves who went on a home-invasion spree over 10 years ago. Cabbie Humph Humphries' daughter, Grace, goes missing. So do Julian Amhurst, a chemistry whiz despondent because he didn't get into Cambridge, and Will Brinks, who spotted a pair of Boreal Owls, the rare funeral owls whose sighting indicates that death is at hand. They don't know the half of it. Just as much criminal mischief as Nightrise (2013), but this time, Kelly makes no attempt to pull all the threads together. The result, sensitive and heartfelt to a fault, is the sort of round robin you might expect from the 87th Precinct: a dizzying range of twists and turns and an awful lot of loose ends.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2013

Local UK newspaper editor Philip Dryden could go years without having a news week like this one. It opens with an epic dust storm wreaking havoc in the Fens region and continues with a string of dangerous metal robberies that threaten train lines and wind turbines. A startlingly gruesome murder scene in a churchyard stirs up the possibilities of a Chinese gang war in the next town over. Through it all, Dryden attempts to connect any dots and stay vigilant with his stories. His interactions with a disturbed Korean War vet haunt him, though, as do his interviews with the blind sexton and his gnarly grandson. But when a deadly--and highly flammable--moonshine operation is discovered, Dryden knows he's sitting on the story of a lifetime. VERDICT Dagger Award-winning Kelly's seventh series entry (after Nightrise) showcases his trademark multiple plotlines to perfection. Newcomers to the series will be delighted by this discovery.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2013
Journalists make such natural sleuths that it's a wonder more of them don't snoop their way through crime fiction. Certainly, they have more resources than most citizens, with an ability to go to scenes, search documents, and question people. Two British authors have been capitalizing on this natural fit: A. D. Scott, whose Joanne Ross series focuses on a small Highlands weekly in the 1950s, and Kelly, who sets his mysteries in today's England. Kelly's series hero, Philip Dryden, is a journalist who has worked his way down from a big daily on Fleet Street to Brimstone Hill, a tiny paper in the West Fens. This is a series in which the main character develops over timeDryden left Fleet Street when his actress wife, Laura, suffered a near-drowning accident that left her in a coma; he uprooted his life to be near her care center, and each novel traces the changes in the couple's slow recovery from trauma. But these novels are far from one notethere's a great deal of fun in them and a lot of fascinating detail about the cutthroat world of journalism. Several plotlines entwine here: Dryden's discovery of a Chinese national who has been literally crucified in a church graveyard; a series of metal thefts in the area; a Korean War veteran haunted by his past; and a 10-year-old cold case involving violent art thefts. Dryden is brilliant in pushing the little paper forward as he both covers and investigates the string of crimes. His relationship with wife and infant son gives added depth to an already engaging character.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)