The Coldest Blood

by Jim Kelly

Book Overview

As mid-winter temperatures grip the cathedral city of Ely, a man is found frozen to death in his high-rise flat. The police may think that Declan McIlroy killed himself, but journalist Philip Dryden... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312364784
• ISBN13: 9780312364786
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

great ending

This is the fourth book in Kelly's Phillip Dryden series, but it is the first I've read. Dryden is a reporter for a small-town paper where he lives on a boat while his wife is recuperating from an accident with a DUI. Life goes by slowly since his wife, Laura, has come out of her 4 year coma, and Dryden no longer drives. Ely, where he lives and works, is in the middle of the coldest weather in history and Dryden is working on a story on cold-weather fatalities and how to prevent them. When Dryden finds the body of one, iced over on the man's own front porch where he'd been locked out, he starts connecting dots that others don't see. The story begins on a scene in 1974 at Dolphin Holiday Camp, and then quickly switches to present day Great Britain. This happens periodically throughout the story, although not enough to confuse the reader since the author gives minute hints to tie the two stories together. The reader then gets some background on Dryden's lonely life as a reporter, husband, and friend. The initial investigation for Dryden is into the deaths caused by the cold front, but he quickly discovers that the two dead men were close friends and witnesses in a case of child abuse against a Catholic orphanage. He manages to engage the confidence of the only witness left - the priest who had been principal back then. It is all off the record, but it gives Dryden enough information to discover more mysterious paths in history that converge with the two dead men. The story has a gripping twist in it that isn't sudden, but enlightening, and helps lead the reader towards the culmination of the plot amidst the worst ice-storm on record. Dryden is a likeable protagonist, and Humph, the cab driver, his quiet Watson-like foil. Dryden is following clues like a reporter would - albeit more like the reporter he used to be before the accident than he would for a small town weekly. The author is able to entwine the tales into a mystery with suspense that builds slowly, until the reader is reluctant to stop because of what might come next. At first I wondered if I would like this book because it seemed to plod along and I didn't understand the background of the characters. However, the more I read the more I wanted to find out how it all tied together - or how it didn't. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the ending - it's not something one could figure out by reading the last page!

This reads like a true crime - but it's very good fiction

Philip Dryden is a reporter for (what seems to be) a tabloid in the Fens region of England. It is the coldest winter in a long, long time; Philip is doing lots of stories about the services available to those in need, and about the needy. Declan McIlroy seems to have killed himself by getting drunk and sitting in an unheated flat with the doors and windows open. Joe Smith appears to have fallen through the ice and died on his own front porch, trying to get to the warmth inside. Philip, in pursuit of his stories, finds that there is some connection between these two men. They are both witnesses in an ongoing case of long-ago child abuse at a local orphanage. They are also possible witnesses in a pending murder reinvestigation. Are their deaths as natural as they appear to be? Or were they murdered? If murdered, which case holds the motive? Philip doesn't live in a vacuum. His wife Laura is slowly coming out of a coma after years of silence. Philip's Watson is a cabbie named Humph, whose greyhound lives in the cab with him. Whoever is after the witnesses believes that Philip has some connection to things, because Philip is almost killed when his houseboat is set on fire. THE COLDEST BLOOD uses setting to the utmost advantage. Whatever passions inspired the various crimes are still potent, in spite of the frigid temperatures and the passage of time. Dryden has passions of his own, although they seem banked right now while he pursues the answers to all kinds of questions. The language Kelly uses is wonderful, in that it never takes the reader out of the story. Kelly writes of the bleakness of winter but also of the joys some people take in that cold. He writes of dreams crushed, dreams delayed, dreams changed by forces beyond ones control. THE COLDEST BLOOD reads like a very well done true crime story - the people are that real, the motives that true.

A solid plot, vivid setting and involving protagonist make this a stand-out series

Kelly's fourth begins with a 1974 prologue: a man on a boat ritualistically mutilating himself outside a children's holiday camp, an apparent suicide. Jump ahead 31 years and talented and tenacious journalist Philip Dryden, stuck on a rural weekly in the bleak Cambridgeshire fens after a devastating accident six years earlier left his wife, Laura, in a coma, follows the newsworthy aspects of a vicious cold snap. People are dying, among them a depressive loner found in his flat with all the windows flung open. The police say suicide but Dryden remains unconvinced. What about the second - washed - whiskey glass and the electricity meter newly filled with coins? Then the man's best friend also dies, after a leg-breaking fall into a frozen fishpond outside his home. When Dryden links them both to a Catholic orphanage under investigation for child abuse in the 1970s, he knows it's murder. Well-paced and deeply atmospheric, the story dredges up Dryden's own less than idyllic childhood as he struggles to make some sense of his future. Laura, comatose but fitfully conscious, does not seem to be improving. She wants to die and she wants Dryden to help her. Occasional flashbacks to a child's game that fateful night at the holiday camp raise more questions than answers and Dryden's dogged probing attracts a killer's attention. The mystery is solidly complex and the continuing characters, including Dryden's quirky driver Humph, reveal a bit more of themselves. Kelly's ("The Water Clock," "The Moon Tunnel") writing imbues the unforgiving landscape and the cold itself with personality while Dryden's wry outlook and innate compassion keep it all from being in the least depressing. A thoughtful, crisply written series that deserves a bigger readership.

descriptive investigative tale

Over thirty-one years ago back in 1974 children on summer vacation were at the Dolphin Holiday Camp in Sea's End, England when they saw the horror that continued to haunt them until now. In the present near Ely on the Letter M Farm, a man shows Joe, one of those witnesses, a picture of the boy who suffered from the horror from back then; this stranger kills Joe by dousing him with icy water leading to hypothermia. Crow reporter Philip Dryden investigates the deep freeze deaths that are sweeping the Ely area especially a long time resident like Joe allegedly falling asleep drunk with his windows wide open and a sheet of ice covering his corpse. The police insist it is a tragic accident due to personal negligence but when the dead drunk's long time best friend since they were children at an orphanage also perishes with a sheet of ice on him in front of his door, Dryden suspects foul play not foul weather. He also knows first hand the link that connects the two dead men to him when the three were children. Aptly titled, wear gloves, a scarf, and a woolen hat because readers will freeze as they feel the temperatures that serve as the backdrop and icy water that is the murder weapon of choice as Jim Kelly is very descriptive with deep freeze that engulfs England. Philip's investigation into the frozen deaths is cleverly tied to his personal life, which is in an uproar as his comatose wife Laura begins to regain consciousness for the first time in years. Fans will enjoy Dryden's latest caper as he moves between the past and the present while trying to avoid becoming the latest cold stiff. Harriet Klausner