The Coldest Blood

Philip Dryden #4

by Jim Kelly

In the quiet, remote landscape of the Cambridgeshire Fens, the past is never truly buried — and neither are its secrets.

In the depths of a brutal winter in the Fens, a man is found frozen to death in his armchair. The windows to his high-rise flat wide open. The TV still on. His cup of coffee frozen in the mug beside him.

Declan McIlroy’s neighbours say he was crazy. But journalist Philip Dryden knows better than to assume this troubled young man would take his own life. Or that he’s just another victim of the cold.

Especially when he finds the body of Declan's best friend, ice-cold and covered in frost on the doorstep of his secluded farmhouse.

A ruthless killer is taking advantage of the deadly cold to hide their tracks.

Then Dryden discovers a sinister connection to St Vincent’s Orphanage in Ely — and the case takes a disturbing new twist.

The past is far from dead. And now it’s coming for Dryden.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Ebooks, Crime, British Literature, Detective, Mystery Thriller

345 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 6, 2006

About the author

Jim Kelly is a journalist and education correspondent for the Financial Times. He lives in Ely with the biographer Midge Gilles and their young daughter. The Water Clock, his first novel, was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel of 2002.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

RATING: 3.0

We've all heard of the tragedies that occur in cold weather, of people dying in their own homes due to lack of heat. But what about someone who commits suicide by opening all the windows in their flat in the most frigid weather of the year in the unforgiving cold of the Fens? From the first, the death of Declan McIlroy bothers Philip Dryden, local reporter. And when Joe Petulengo, a close friend of McIlroy's, also succumbs after falling into water and being locked out of his home, he is sure that someone has killed these two men and that their deaths are related. The police are completely uninterested in Dryden's murder theories and accept the deaths at face value. And so it is up to him to delve deeper if he is to prove what he suspects.

As it turns out, McIlroy and Petulengo have been close friends since their youth when they both lived in a local orphanage which is now being investigated for abuse of its inhabitants. Dryden himself has a connection to the two men that results in his becoming a target as well. Through dogged determination, Dryden looks at the past and uncovers several crimes that date back decades.

At the same time, Philip's wife, Laura, is emerging from a coma and beginning to communicate from her hospital bed. He's been a faithful visitor since the first but is somewhat uncomfortable about the idea of her transformation into the conscious world. In an effort to move forward and into a new state of being, he removes her from care and takes her on a small holiday at a local spa. However, that location contains several clues to the mystery that Dryden is trying to solve and he does not spend much time with her, although he suspects that she may be suicidal.

The plot of The Coldest Blood is extremely complex, and I had a great deal of difficulty following it. Kelly very sparingly parcels out details about the past throughout the book, which made it difficult to form a cohesive picture of the history of the characters. Each time he revealed new information, I struggled to fit it into the context of what was going on in the book. Instead of integrating the past into the narrative, it was communicated in chunks. That affected the pacing
because the reader was taken out of the flow of the main narrative and
brought back into a wholly different situation, then thrown back into
the present. I wished that he had used a more straightforward approach.

In addition, the characters never came to life for me. This is the second Philip Dryden book that I have read, and I still feel that I don't know him at all. He is transported about by a cabbie named Humph, who is even more of a cipher to me. The one good thing about Philip is his obvious devotion to his wife through times of extreme difficulty. However, that was mitigated by the fact that when he took her on holiday, he consistently ignored her in favor of pursuing the investigation.

Kelly did an excellent job of presenting the Fens setting, particularly the unrelenting cold and its impact on the environment. However, overall the narrative felt very disjointed and choppy to me—and nowhere near as smooth as the ice upon which Dryden skated.

[Michael Cordery · Rating 4 out of 5]

The one thing that dominates Jim Kelly's books is the weather, particularly cold winter weather and this book is no exception. I said in an earlier review that I was born and raised in the Fens, albeit on the Norfolk side and this book spends much more time in Norfolk than Cambridgeshire and there is more emphasis on King's Lynn as the town of importance rather than Ely. I was a paperboy for 2 1/2 years and that was for 363 days a year including the winters to which the Author refers. It was also in the days when there was no central heating and few if any mod cons so the fact that the weather dominates the books and people were dying as a result is a bit over the pail. I can tell you that I suffered greatly at times over my 5/6 mile winter hikes and this was a sad reminder of the flat, black peat land I traversed. The winter in the book was clearly a 1962/63 winter whereas it was written around 2005.

I haven't gone into the story, there are plenty of reviewers who do that but I did find the book a depressing reminder and it took 9 days to read instead of the usual 3 or so. Living for the past 60+ years on the west side of Australia currently in 32o I still felt the cold and also pleased my employer sent me to Australia all those years ago.

Oh, the book. It's well written. I like the characters very much and the story is also well thought out with very plausible and good endings. There seems to be no Book 5 so we will never know the fate of Phillip Dryden's wife. If you want cool off this book is for you but if you are from Northern Alberta it will seem like a normal spring day.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know if I like the protagonist of these books or not. He’s dogged in his search for the story, but it usually goes beyond searching for a story into searching for justice, often at the cost of all else. He’s not above sharing his expertise with his junior colleague but he’s not really a team player. He’s willing to help the police when he thinks they need it but he rarely tells them everything. Somehow he inspires loyalty but I’m not sure he deserves it. He lives with the guilt of having survived the accident which robbed his wife of the ability to live her life but at the same time he seems to resent the time he spends with her. In this book he takes her to a holiday camp in the midst of the worst winter in living memory and just as an ice-storm is headed to their area, he leaves her on her own, with her locked-in syndrome in a cabin to go chasing after people he hopes can give him answers.


Despite all of the above these books are eminently readable and hold on to the reader’s attention. Weather seems to have been a feature in all the books I have read so far and in this one it was outstanding, I felt the cold and the ice shards deep within my psyche as I read. Dryden is good at keeping secrets - just not as good as he thinks he is, but he gets to the heart of things.
‘

[Mark Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This complicated thriller features the likable reporter Philip Dryden, whose life was changed several years ago when he and his wife were in an auto accident that left her in a coma. She can communicate now with some sort of device, but she’s a barely functioning quadriplegic with dim prospects of recovery. Another major character is Humph, a cabbie who helps Dryden out.

In this tale, a couple of people are found dead during a cold snap. The police attribute the deaths to suicide and an accident, but Dryden has his doubts. Those doubts grow stronger as he digs into the lives of the dead men, lives that, he learns, intersected with his own. There are some interesting twists in this fairly complicated story, and the author has done a wonderful job of instilling a sense of atmosphere for this ice-cold tale.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

A man is found frozen to death in his flat; another man is found frozen at his doorstep; both labeled as suicides- they are friends. However, Dryden feels that it is murder in both cases and begins investigating without the help of the police. This leads to an incident at a holiday camp that took place when Dryden was approximately 10 years old. Also, involves abuse of children at a catholic orphanage 30 years ago. Subplots: Laura responding a bit more from her comatose state, Humph continues to drive Dryden, an attempt on Dryden’s life. Looking forward to the next book in the series.

[Margaret Young · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly I just could not swallow the hyperbolic language about "freezing" to death in weather that is significantly warmer than climate I live in (during the winter.) Yes, those who are older and those in ill health may (and do) suffer from hypothermia, but the temperatures given us in the early chapters of the book are not life threatening for most people. Indeed, heat routinely kills more people than does cold in my part of the world.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

By the end the plot of The Coldest Blood is completely overwrought, but I was securely locked on before that happened. I enjoyed the Fenland and coastal holiday camp settings, and although I am coming in on the series several books in, Jim Kelly's local paper reporter Dryden is an interesting character as a sleuth.

[Eirlys · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read

I liked this ingenious mystery, it is thrilling and puzzling all the way throughout. I like how Phillip Dryden gets involved in his work, often finding one simple fact that leads him into strange places and situations. Once again his characters are played by a skilled puppet master.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

When two witnesses whose testimony will result in the release of a falsely accused man are murdered, a third person with a personal stake in the matter decides he must solve the crime on his own despite his extremely disabled wife and his career.

[Trudi Starling · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read recently

Beautifully written, incredibly descriptive and a really good plot. One of the very best authors I've found in a l o my while, I can't wait to read more.

[David Highton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Caught up with this Fenland series of mysteries featuring local reporter Philip Dryden - as apparent suicides of two friends coincide with a possible appeal against a 30 year old murder conviction Dryden finds his own teenage involvement 31 years earlier has become important.

[Nicole B · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent plot and story with a grim atmosphere to match the characters and events

[Shannon Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many tangents. Had a hard time keeping my interest.

[Jamie Cavazos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Atmospheric setting. Robust chsracters.

[Madge · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/3

Enjoyable; gets a tad messy towards the end, but the pieces do kind of fit.

[Paschalis]

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[laura harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Didn't want to out it down. Good twists and turns

[P.J. Coldren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s bloody cold in Ely this year. People are freezing to death, two in particular. Philip Dryden, as part of a series on the cold, looks into the deaths of Declan McIlroy and Jim Smith. One froze to death in an armchair on an apartment balcony, the other fell through some ice and never made it back inside his house.

McIlroy and Smith have some ties that aren’t apparent at first glance. Both spent some time at The Catholic Orphanage of St Vincent de Barfleur; there is an ongoing investigation into long-term physical and mental (although not sexual) abuse at St Vincent de Barfleur and both men are witnesses. In one of those amazing coincidences which do happen in real life every now and then, not just in fiction, both men are also witnesses in the reinvestigation of a murder which took place many years ago. They claim to have seen Paul Gedney days or weeks after Chips Connor is supposed to have killed him, which would mean that Chips has been in jail a long time for something he couldn’t have done.

Dryden's private life is just as untidy. His wife has been in a coma for a long, long time; she has been coming out of it slowly, with bouts of depression a consistent part of the recovery process. Humph, a cabbie who serves as Dryden's personal driver and sounding board, provides some amusing moments, although one wonders how his greyhound likes living in the backseat of a small automobile. When an incident from Dryden's childhood floats to the surface, he realizes that the story he is writing comes very close to home, and may place others in peril, not just himself.

Kelly writes compellingly about passions spent, passions long-buried, passions denied. His world is bleak but not hopeless, his characters flawed and fleshed-out. IN COLDEST BLOOD is the fourth in the Philip Dryden series. If I had my druthers, I’d have started with THE WATER CLOCK and kept on going. Now I’ll have to back-track and catch up. It will be time well spent.

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

THE COLDEST BLOOD (Unl. Invest-Philip Dryden-England-Cont) – G
Kelly, Jim – 4th in series
Michael Joseph, 2006, UK Hardcover – ISBN: 0718147537

First Sentence: The dagger lay on his naked thigh, its blade as cold as a rock-pool pebble.

Journalist Philip Dryden is researching two stories. A Catholic boy’s orphanage is being investigated for severely beating those who were in its care. England is experiencing its coldest winter since 1947 and many are dying of hypothermia. One elderly man’s is found frozen to death in his apartment, another by his front door. Dryden doesn’t believe either was accidental as his history intersects with theirs.

I always have a bit of trouble getting into Kelly’s books. It doesn’t take long, however, before I am completely caught up in them.

He does character development well with his characters lives and behaviors reflecting the events of their pasts and present. With Dryden, in particular, and his wife Laura, a victim of Locked-In Syndrome, we see development in their characters.

It is the plot that is Kelly’s particular strength. He is very good at building the story, bit-by-bit, drawing you in and building the suspense. For all that, this was not my favorite book in the series. The moving between two times was necessary but a bit confusing. And for all the importance of the weather, I never really felt it; it was visceral for me.

Still it was a good read. I shall continue with the series and hope the next book returns to his usual quality.

[Damaskcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Dryden finds himself in the middle of an investigation which takes him back to his own childhood and an elusive memory from a holiday at a nearby holiday camp. It is very cold in the Fens and people are dying of the excessively low temperatures. Two men are found frozen to death, apparent victims of the weather but Dryden feels there is something more to the deaths. His wife, Laura, is emerging from years in a coma and isn't sure whether she wants to go on living.

As Dryden digs deeper into the dead men's backgrounds he unearths all sorts of secrets and connections including one to a long ago murder and one to systemic abuse of boys in a Catholic orphanage. This is a harrowing and intriguing mystery. It is well written, as always, and the author weaves together the disparate threads of the various stories to make a satisfying whole.

I particularly liked the descriptions of the freak weather and its effects on the facilities we take for granted in the twenty first century. I didn't work out what was going on and who was behind the killings until just before the end though the clues were there. I thought the relationship between Dryden and his wife was well and sensitively handled and I shall be interested to read later books in the series to see how it progresses. The books in this series can be read as standalone novels but are probably better read in the order in which they were published.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Cat. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This mystery series is so fascinating: the main character, Phillip Dryden, is a reporter in Ely. His wife has been in a coma for the whole series, though she is now awake, sort of.

Anyway, this story revolves around a cold snap, people freezing to death as a result of the weather (or not), years of abuse in a local Catholic orphanage, and Dryden's childhood trip to the seaside. Yes, they are all related. Oddly. The cold business, after this winter, kind of made me roll my eyes. Below zero (celsius) is hardly worth talking about here; I was wearing sandals all weekend in spite of temperatures in the single digits (celsius).

It's hard not to like Dryden. Except there are times when he is really annoying, in a perfectly realistic way. Can't wait for the next one. I hope Jim Kelly is on my author list....

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another good book by Jim Kelly. The Philip Dryden series takes place in the Fens in England. And the weather is cold and miserable. Kelly writes books with great atmosphere. You can feel the cold seeping through you as you read. In this book a small portion of Dryden’s own past comes back to play a major role in a series of murders. The plot is intricate, the mystery keeps you guessing, the end of the book is believable. As I’ve mentioned in another review about a Philip Dryden book, it’s refreshing to read a crime novel from the point of view of a reporter. And of course Humph, Dryden’s own personal taxi driver, deserves a mention. I love this quirky character who never seems to leave the confines of his cab unless absolutely necessary.

[Alistair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have persevered with Jim Kelly.

Personally, I have found his gore not to my taste and one of his books “Fire Baby” was quite frankly depressing. The thought of me giving him 4 stars was, until this book, impossible.

The signs were not good at the start of the book, with opening pages of gloom and gore.

HOWEVER, once past that this book really picked up!

Kelly’s fondness for time jumping is still there, but nowhere as intrusive and did not impair the clever plot which had a good twist at the end.

I actually decided to read the next Kelly immediately!

P.S. I guessed much of it about halfway, partly because of the plotline in my previous book John Lawton’s “Black Out”

[WR · Rating 2 out of 5]

First time I've read this author - part of my attempts to broaden my mystery repertoire. Wish I had started with the first book in the series, but this was the one I found in the library. Overall, not a bad mystery (good way to spend a cold rainy day), though it was too full of coincidences, and I don't generally like it when the protagonist finds himself personally involved in the mystery that he's trying to solve. Will probably try another of his books if I chance upon one, but won't be looking too hard.

[Gayle Flannelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Kelly's Philip Dryden series and this book was no exception. It loses one star because of a few irritating inconsistencies, but they're small and most readers probably wouldn't even notice them (I'm pretty sure my OCD is to blame). Dryden is a beautifully drawn character, the Fens of northern England are a wonderful atmospheric setting, and Kelly's plot is intricate and ingenious.

[Ishmael Seaward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the best in the series. Also the final, I suspect. What I like about it is the surprising connections that keep popping up. I also found it helpful to look up the medical terms; it definitely adds depth to the story. It also helps to use Google maps.

[Andy Plonka · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good to reconnect with this series. Kelly has quite a likable though flawed hero in Phillip Dryden. This entry gives some of the childhood background of Dryden. I'm going to have to get current with the series

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another solid tale of Philip Dryden's life and investigations, he becoming a more-rounded figure with each succeeding novel (though I confess I felt for Laura's abandonment in this) Maybe an even bigger star is the landscape and the weather, so well-evoked.

[Rodillagrande · Rating 3 out of 5]

The crime puzzle was interesting but it was the situation with his wife that held the suspense for me.