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The Water Clock
 
 

The Water Clock (Paperback)

by Jim Kelly (Author) "Humphrey H. Holt's licensed minicab crept across the fen like the model motorcar on a giant Monopoly board ..." (more)
4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (26 Jul 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141009330
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141009339
  • Product Dimensions: 18 x 10.6 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 35,312 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Product Description

Review
Philip Dryden is a senior reporter on the Crow, a paper based in Ely in the Cambridgeshire fen district. His life has been in disarray since Laura, his wife, was left in a coma following a bad car crash in which he could have drowned - an old fear from childhood. Now a body is discovered in a block of ice in the boot of a sunken car. The next day a corpse is discovered riding a stone gargoyle on the roof of Ely Cathedral. Forensic evidence links both victims to an event in 1966. Dryden is more involved than he realises, and eventually he faces a ruthless killer. It all makes for an exciting and unusual crime thriller. The atmosphere is brilliantly described. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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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Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
Humphrey H. Holt's licensed minicab crept across the fen like the model motorcar on a giant Monopoly board. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A master of place, character and plot, 21 Jul 2003
By J. F. Bell "Julian Bell" (Twickenham, Middlesex United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I'm not normally a great reader of crime fiction, so that makes Jim Kelly's achievement all the more impressive for me. The strongest character in this book is undoubtedly the East Anglian fens, whose dark, brooding presence Kelly evokes brilliantly. But the journalist / detective Dryden, his mordant but loveable sidekick Humph, and all the other characters are utterly convincing, and, best of all, unlike a lot of genre fiction, you really care what happens to them. The plot is paced with great skill, and is consistently gripping. After reading this, I really felt I knew the Fens, and knew what it was like to be a provincial journalist - and I'd been thoroughly entertained. There's great potential in this writer and this series - I'll be looking out for the next one, and so, I'm confident, will anybody else who reads The Water Clock. The thrills of John Grisham with the social observation and sensitive characterisation of a much finer writer.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A screamingly good read, 4 Nov 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: The Water Clock (Paperback)
Jim Kelly seems to me to have pulled off that rare feat of writing a novel for all tastes:
It is funny, compelling, haunting and generally a very good read.
Handsome Philip Dryden is a newspaper reporter turned detective. His slothful side-kick Humph is a triumph of a creation. Taciturn in his own language, he lives in a fog of foreign language tapes inside his shoddy cab in which the meter always reads £2.95.
The Water Clock is an extraordinarily visual work – easy to imagine on television. The brooding presence of the Fens, the elemental forces of nature, set against the drama of individual lives.. It reminded me a little of Thomas Hardy’s Egdon Heath.
One of the finest comic scenes has police in full riot gear ludicrously tiptoeing in tortoise formation towards a suspect’s home, observed with laconic interest by Dryden from the window seat of his favourite Chinese restaurant.
The narrative is fast-paced, breathlessly so at times, as Dryden's investigation pulls him back through time to a crime committed in 1966.
Kelly’s account of the daily lives of local newspaper reporters is among the most convincing I have read, even if their diet of news stories is often more humdrum.
This has all the style and grace of a serious novel, the fun of a comic novel and the charge of a top-notch thriller.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great debut, 11 Mar 2004
By RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
Debuts are often described as “promising”, their writers as “someone to watch”. However, every year there are one or two that extend beyond that. They are not merely promising, they are the real achieved thing, immediate potential fulfilled, and they are not just someone to watch, they are someone to go and read, now. The Water Clock is just such a book, Jim Kelly one of those writers. In the best traditions of crime writing, Kelly is a journalist, as is his protagonist Phillip Dryden, a man still taunted by the grief of a car accident two years ago which left his wife Laura in a permanent coma. She exists in a nearby hospital, where he visits her every day.

One cold evening in the watery Cambridgeshire Fens, children skating on the ice spot something beneath, and hours later a car is winched, gushing chilled water, out of the frozen marshes. Inside, encased in a block of ice, is a mutilated body. The following day, after workmen ascend the Cathedral roof to carry out maintenance work that has not been required for decades, a decaying corpse is found grotesquely riding a stone gargoyle. On a part of the roof entirely hidden from view, it has been there for at least 30 years.

When forensic evidence links the two killings and a horrific crime committed in 1966, Dryden knows he’s onto a great story. But, chasing it will draw him into a cloudy investigation of the past, as well as to some disturbing revelations about that night two years ago which changed his life forever, before taking him finally to an eerie house in the middle of the flooding Fen landscape.

This is not only one of the best debuts of the year, but possibly one of the best novels, too. It boasts a disturbing plot, and is brilliantly told in a wonderfully individual voice with its easy journalistic eye for telling details of character and story. Dryden is a likeable protagonist – always important – and though he doesn’t quite stun the reader with amazement as Rebus, Scarpetta or Bosch may, he does still occasionally sparkle with a compelling and unfathomable complexity hidden behind a rather lonely, laid-back and slightly cynical veneer. He is certainly great company.

The marshy expanses of the Fen landscape are described absolutely brilliantly. Indeed, this almost jaw-dropping evocation of place and atmosphere is quite remarkable, The Fens become dark, ominous, malevolent; a brilliant backdrop to the story. Jim Kelly has done in one book for Norfolk what Reginald Hill is still doing for Yorkshire after 19.

There’s a wonderful sly humour to the writing too. A humour that is witty, sharp, occasionally satirical, it underpins the narrative in places and makes the whole thing shine. Humphrey “Humph” Holt, the overweight cab driver who, effectively, acts as Dryden’s constant chauffer, whose meter always reads £2.95 and whose taxi cassette-deck is perpetually playing foreign-language learning tapes is an absolutely brilliant comic creation!

The Water Clock, the cover of which boasts impressive blurbs from Colin Dexter, Val McDermid and even the wonderful Donna Leon, is a very impressive debut. I don’t want to hype it up too much – it tends to lead to disappointment – but it’s an atmospheric, dark and watery book well worth your time and cash.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Water a Way to Start
'The Water Clock' is a great debut novel from Jim Kelly and hints that he could go on to become one of the best crime writers in the UK. Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2007 by Sam

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoy the writing and enjoy trying to guess whodunnit!
I don't really go for crime fiction, but this is enjoyably quirky and has a good plot to boot, so I had trouble putting it down. Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2006 by Myrtle

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric And Eminently Readable
The story is set in the Fens, and, as such, has an immediate appeal to anyone familiar with the area, particularly Ely, and it's immediate surroundings. Read more
Published on 19 Feb 2006 by K. F. Moore

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping Detective Story
A first rate policier that accurately captures the spooky atmosphere of the Fens. Kelly is gifted at displaying the power of climate over our lives: rising tides, threatening... Read more
Published on 7 April 2005

5.0 out of 5 stars The clock is dripping
You might wonder why this book is titled 'The Water Clock'. A water clock does put in a brief appearance and it has a small but significant part in the plot. Read more
Published on 2 Jun 2004 by Sally-Anne

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent pace and style
A marvellous British thriller in which a down-at-heel journalist tracksdown a double murderer in a brilliantly-realised Fenland setting. Read more
Published on 21 April 2004 by philipcoggan

4.0 out of 5 stars Look East
This a sparkling read. The Fens have rarely seemed so interesting. Kelly clearly is a fan of East Anglia and paints an evocative picture of it before we get to know the full... Read more
Published on 16 Nov 2002

4.0 out of 5 stars water clock - review
A pretty good read. It is strong on setting - the Fens make a powerful backdrop to a who-dun-it plot and there is a real sense of how a landscape can influence characters. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2002

3.0 out of 5 stars Great setting but the heart seems missing.
I suppose I can tell a journalist wrote this novel. They have to deliver facts without too much embellishment or inner searching. Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars A new detective
Hope this author goes on to write some more in this series as his detective and sidekick make interesting reading. Read more
Published on 2 Oct 2002

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