基本信息出版社：Minotaur Books
页码：352 页
出版日期：2007年01月
ISBN：0312364784
International Standard Book Number：0312364784
条形码：9780312364786
EAN：9780312364786
版本：1st
装帧：精装
正文语种：英语
丛书名：Journalist Philip Dryden

内容简介 A man lies hidden in an abandoned boat. Stifling his own screams, he draws a knife across his arm, letting the blood flow free. Soon he’ll be dead – and life can begin again.

Three decades later, small-town newspaper reporter Philip Dryden is experiencing a cold, bitter Christmas on the Fens. Dryden’s wife, Laura, is emerging from years in a coma, unsure if she wants to go on living. Meanwhile, people are freezing to death, among them Declan McIlroy, a 39 year old loner found dead in his flat with the windows thrown open. The police rule the death a suicide, but Dryden has his doubts – especially when he finds the body of Declan’s best friend Joe frozen within a shell of ice on the doorstep of his secluded farmhouse.

At the same time, Dryden is investigating allegations of abuse laid against a Catholic orphanage – a touchy subject, due to his own Catholic upbringing. The incidents seem unrelated until Dryden discovers that Declan was one of the victims. Could his death have been part of a cover-up?

Soon, Dryden is picking his way along a disturbing trail of cruelty and betrayal to a brilliantly executed crime, and to a chilling, half-remembered mystery from his own childhood.
作者简介 Jim Kelly, whose father was a detective for Scotland Yard, previously worked as a journalist and education correspondent for the Financial Times. He lives in Ely with the biographer Midge Gillies and their young daughter. His debut, The Water Clock, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger for the best first crime novel of 2002, and in 2004 he was very highly commended for the CWA Dagger in the Library, which is awarded to “the author of crime fiction whose work is giving the greatest enjoyment to readers.”
媒体推荐 “Quirky, emotionally intelligent crime fiction that leaves the reader hungry for more.” – Val McDermid

“A masterful stylist, Kelly crafts sharp, crisp sentences so pure, so true, they qualify as modern poetry. The cold, bleak landscape of the fens seems to seep through the paper and chill the fingers turning the pages.” – Publishers Weekly

“A sparkling star, newly risen in the crime fiction firmament.” – Colin Dexter

“Kelly enlivens his tale with a richly atmospheric setting, sharp contemporary characters, and an often biting knack for capturing the essence of people.” – The Washington Post

“The setting is chilly, the writing is good.” – Chicago Tribune

“Intriguing characters and locale and wryly believable newsroom background.” – Kirkus Reviews
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

Kelly's well-written if convoluted fourth outing for Cambridgeshire journalist Philip Dryden (after 2005's The Moon Tunnel) opens with a gruesome scene at the Dolphin Holiday Camp in August 1974, then shifts to a record-breaking cold snap 31 years later and a terminally ill man's murder. Dryden gets embroiled in the mystery by reporting on another death, that of landscape painter Declan McIlroy, ostensibly due to the cold. But the two corpses share a common past, and the search for the truth puts Dryden on the trail of a bizarre murder case dating back to that summer in 1974. Kelly's prose is insightful, but the complexities of his story can be confusing. Dryden's backstory—his invalid wife, Laura, is recovering from a coma; refusing to drive himself, he relies on the delightfully quirky cabbie Humph—may be challenging for newcomers to decipher. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Cold permeates this tale: the actual cold snap that holds the English Fens in its grasp; the frozen state of "Locked-in Syndrome," which grips the hero's wife in a comalike state; and the hero's own iced-over hopes. The fact that the hero keeps struggling on makes this novel, like its predecessors in the series, as much a quest story as a mystery. Philip Dryden was formerly a thriving Fleet Street journalist, and his wife was a successful London actress. Both their lives have been on hold since the car accident six years before that left Dryden's wife in a peculiarly conscious/comatose state, necessitating a move to the cathedral city of Ely for its premier hospital. Dryden now works as a journalist for a much lesser paper, leaving him plenty of time to investigate fully any puzzles that come by way of his work, which happens when the city of Ely and the Fens are hit with a series of deaths seemingly related to the cold snap. Two of the victims are connected by the fact that they both recently filed abuse charges against an orphanage where they lived as children. Dryden explores whether these two plaintiffs may have been murdered. 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 (his descriptions of the abandoned orphanage and the Victorian workhouse-turned-hospital are achingly bleak) and his full-throttle characterizations as for his masterful plotting. Connie Fletcher
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