| The Water Clock (Philip Dryden Thrillers) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jim Kelly
Publisher: Leisure Books
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 643215
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 309
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0843960000
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780843960006
ASIN: 0843960000
Publication Date: November 27, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
"A great story--at last," remarks newspaper journalist Philip Dryden, as he considers the mutilated body of a man found in the trunk of a car pulled from the frozen River Lark in England's watery Cambridgeshire Fens district. After spending most of his career reporting on national politics and other contemptible doings in hectic London, Dryden--the protagonist in Jim Kelly's debut novel, The Water Clock--deserves a break from his more mundane rural assignments, writing about flower shows and golden wedding anniversaries. However, he doesn't know just how consuming this "great story" will be--or that it will soon connect to the finding of a second, older corpse, this one wrapped around an ancient cathedral gargoyle, and lead back to an unsolved, 1966 filling-station robbery, during which a woman was shot and blinded. Kelly, an education correspondent for Britain's Financial Times, deftly captures the quirky staffing and droll provinciality endemic to country weeklies, such as Dryden's The Crow. ("[T]he day after press day was plagued by serial whingers who'd spotted tiny mistakes, and occasional whoppers. Drydens favourite ... had been the week theyd included the death notice of Albert Morris in the 'Used Cars' column.") It's Dryden himself, though, who is best rendered in these pages. An irrationally exuberant ink-slinger and "dedicated physical coward of extraordinary range," hes encumbered by guilt for having left his wife, Laura, in a coma after a foggy-night accident sent their car into a river. Some unknown person dragged Dryden to safety, but abandoned Laura. The reporter now refuses to drive, instead being squired about by a taciturn cabbie, and makes regular, if increasingly hopeless visits to his wife's bedside. But when a cop on the outs with his bosses asks Dryden to falsify a story in order to expose a murderer, the newsie sees an opportunity to bargain for information about what really happened the night of that car crash--giving little thought to how the killer might strike back at him, or the defenseless Laura. The Water Clock's plot is confusing on occasion, and the climactic drama here is undercut by too much mystery-solving dialogue. Still, this first installment of a new series is confidently composed and makes excellent use of its singular setting. Dryden seems destined to find many more great stories in the future. --J. Kingston Pierce
Product Description
Time is running out for Philip Dryden...In the snowbound landscape of the Cambridgeshire fens, a body is discovered, locked in a block of ice. High on Ely Cathedral a second corpse is found, grotesquely 'riding' a stone gargoyle. Journalist Philip Dryden knows he's onto a great story when forensic evidence links both victims to one terrifying event in 1966. But the murders also offer Dryden the key to a very personal mystery. Who saved his life two years ago? And, more importantly, who left his wife to die? The answer will bring Dryden face to face with his own guilt, his own fears - and a cold and ruthless killer...
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
Tying together the present and the past November 10, 2007
First Sentence: Out on the Middle Level midnight sees the rising flood nudge open the doors of the Baptist chapel at Black Bank.
Reporter Philip Dryden nearly drowned as a boy and again when his car went into a river, leaving his wife, Laura, in `locked-in syndrome' coma. His aversion to water is understandable when he attends a crime scene where a car, whose trunk contains a mutilated body, is pulled from a frozen river. A second body, the corpse having died 30-years previously, is found on the roof of Ely Cathedral. Dryden is on the trail of the story when it is found the two victims are tied to a crime from 1966. The investigation also ties to the night that changed his, and Laura's, life.
I can understand why this book was short listed for a CWA John Creasey award.. It did take me a bit to realize that while he's telling the present day story, he is also telling the events of the past and bringing the two together in an "oh, wow" ending with all the ends neatly tied up. The characters are great; Dryden is interesting and multi-dimensional and his driver, Humphrey H. Holt, could become a favorite of mine. Kelly's use of the weather is critical to the story. It was refreshing that the original crime isn't a serial killing. It is also nice that the story is not set in London, but in the Cambridgeshire Fens. This is the first book I've read of Kelly's and it definitely won't be the last
 Smashing debut! December 1, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a smashing debut novel by a writer more associated with the august "Financial Times" newspaper. The protagonist is indeed a newspaperman but this one, Philip Dryden, toils at the other end of his previous London life and now works as a big fish in a tiny pond on the Cambridgeshire Fens. He writes for the local rag, dubiously named "The Crow". With one of the most riveting prologue chapters I've ever read, the book starts us on a frozen journey through a maze of crimes that may or may not be connected. All of the action takes place in an extremely cold week in November, and we know that from the first, so immediately the clock is ticking and Kelly uses that fact to drive the story to increasingly higher levels of tension.
The core of the story revolves around two murders that have taken place more than 30 years apart and are connected to yet another crime that left a young woman horribly disfigured. In pulling at the threads of these stories, Dryden works with the inept and unhappy local detective who has no apparent interest in any of the connections that seem so apparent to Dryden. And, of course, there has to be a romance. This one is tragic. Dryden has his own mystery because he was in a horrible car accident years before and was rescued from drowning in that accident by a mysterious stranger who didn't also rescue Dryden's wife Laura, and she has lain in a coma ever since. So Dryden has his own mystery and his own demons.
This is a small, lonely place on the planet and the cast of available characters is small so you know, almost from the start, that all stories intertwine and that nothing is what it seems. Right up to the end, I was shivering (you get damned cold reading this book) and hoping upon hope that I was wrong about the evil at the core. At the end, it didn't matter. Being wrong didn't keep the book from stirring around in my head for several days more.
 Well-crafted, but not much else. January 30, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I can understand why some people might find this book to be a nice change of pace to the dross that James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell are releasing, but I'm with those who found it rather underwhelming.
For one thing, there is just far too much description. At one point - towards the end - we get a four-page explanation as to why the Fens is going to flood. I found this a little more than was necessary. Also, the severe lack of dialogue made the characters very hard to identify with. How can I get to know these people if they barely even speak? Dryden's cab driver "Humph" was so dull I wondered why he was even included in the plot.
In the end, everything tied up very well. If Kelly can combine his obvious gift for plotting with better character development and a less show-offy writing style, he could find himself up there with Jonathan Kellerman and Michael Connelly.
 Couldn't really get into it December 6, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'm surprised at the glowing reviews. Maybe it's just me, but the character wasn't particularly appealing and the narrative not really gripping. Read it to see how the mystery was resolved, Probably won't read another one from this author until I check the reviews. And the description of the weather in the Fens made me shudder.....how can anyone live in that awful climate???
Pleasantly simple. October 26, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I picked this up as a result of the glowing reviews, and was not disappointed. Water Clock is a simple, straight-up mystery and a well-written one at that. It will appeal to readers (like myself) who have less patience with the trend of producing ever more shocking serial killers instead of well-plotted characters. There are some minor uneven points (the pace is a little bit wrong), but they are more than made up for by the positive aspects. Give it a try!
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