Free of the Fens

Jim Kelly, the British author of five fine books about journalist Philip Dryden, who lives in a unique marsh-like town in England’s Fen District (Fire Baby, The Skeleton Man, etc.), starts a promising new series in Death Wore White, due out in from Minotaur Books in June. The story stars a pair of British cops in the northern town of King’s Lynn--a young detective chief inspector named Peter Shaw, who is in charge of the disgraced partner of his late father. Their first case together is a puzzler: At 5.15 p.m. Harvey Ellis was trapped--stranded in a line of eight cars by a blizzard on a Norfolk coast road. At 8.15 p.m. Harvey Ellis was dead--and nobody left a footprint in the snow. As is true of all of Kelly’s books, the physical details in Death Wore White are fresh and important.

I especially miss one character from the Dryden series--the fat old cab jockey who ferried the non-driving copper around. But in his place is a steely Czech female forensic expert, who gives the art of crime-scene investigation a hard new look.