Rating: 
Summary: Debut of the year?
Review: 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
Rating: 
Summary: Well-crafted, but not much else.
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasantly simple.
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Don't Understand the Rave Reviews
Review: I won't go into what the book is about since others have done that but I will say that I found this book very dull. I am a fairly fast reader and this is a short book but it took me days to get through because I just couldn't get interested in the people or the "mystery."
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't really get into it
Review: 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???
Rating:
Summary: Well written but very oridinary
Review: In the Cambridgeshire Fens, a car is pulled from the frozen river. In the trunk is a man's body. Philip Dryden, reporter for a local weekly newspaper, investigates the story. Things get a bit more exciting when another body is found on the roof of the Ely Cathedral adjacent to a stone gargoyle. This body is felt to be decades old. Is there a connection between the two deaths? The answer, unfortunately might very well prove dangerous to Dryden.
THE WATER CLOCK is a very well written but a very ordinary British crime novel. In spite of some very well done characterizations, the plot was simply uninteresting. The use of stock devices such as the villian holding a gun on the hero at the end while all is divulged did not help elevate this book much beyond average. This is a surprising nomination for the Creasey Award.
Rating:
Summary: A stellar debut
Review: It begins at the end with the reporter, Philip Dryden, standing in the ruins of his childhood home waiting for a killer while the flood waters rise around him. London journalist and first-time novelist Kelly then jumps back a week, introducing Dryden on his way to a watery crime scene in the damp, frozen Cambridgeshire Fens. He rides in a decrepit taxi driven by the mountainous, mostly silent Humph, kept on retainer by Dryden, who hasn't driven a car since the accident that put his wife, Laura, into a coma two years earlier. Philip was driving. His car was startled off the road into one of the Fens rivers and he remembers little else, except that he was pulled out in time and his wife wasn't. He left his fast-track Fleet Street job and came home to the Fens to become senior reporter for the local weekly and visit his wife's hospital room in the evenings. The police are winching a car out of the water when Dryden arrives. In the trunk is a body. But when a second body - 30 years dead- turns up during some restoration work on the cathedral roof, Dryden's investigative skills prove more adept than those of the local police. He seizes his chance to trade newspaper resources for the sealed file on his accident. But the killer doesn't plan to sit idly by and let Dryden ferret him out. Kelly requires diligence from his reader, particularly at the start, as the story unfolds by association rather than chronology. But the author rewards our attention. Flashes of humor and brilliant visuals accompany the brooding insularity of rural society and guarded secrets as Dryden chips away layers of deceit and betrayal. "A dedicated physical coward of extraordinary range," Dryden knows "with sickening self-knowledge that his bravery was the product of a tremendous desire to show off." He's also tenacious and irreverent and burdened with guilt. A great man to have along on a story, Dyden's first venture should be the beginning of a fine new career for Kelly.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Understand the Rave Reviews
Review: Once again I'm mystified by how a book I thought was barely readable could be short-listed for a literary award and receive glowing reviews from writers like Colin Dexter and Val McDermid. The story outline sounded so promising, yet the author got bogged down in page after page of uneven, jerky narrative, none of which moved the plot forward or made me feel that I knew any of the characters better. It was like wading through treacle. In the end I was so bored and frustrated that I looked at the ending, just to get it over with. Some of the descriptive writing was good - the occasional phrase or sentence even memorable - but for me, the action never really got going, I didn't care about any of the characters and there was no feeling of tension or suspense. A very unexciting read.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing debut
Review: Once again I'm mystified by how a book I thought was barely readable could be short-listed for a literary award and receive glowing reviews from writers like Colin Dexter and Val McDermid. The story outline sounded so promising, yet the author got bogged down in page after page of uneven, jerky narrative, none of which moved the plot forward or made me feel that I knew any of the characters better. It was like wading through treacle. In the end I was so bored and frustrated that I looked at the ending, just to get it over with. Some of the descriptive writing was good - the occasional phrase or sentence even memorable - but for me, the action never really got going, I didn't care about any of the characters and there was no feeling of tension or suspense. A very unexciting read.
Rating:
Summary: strong investigative tale
Review: Philip Dryden was driving while his spouse Laura slept when another vehicle smacked his car sending it over the edge into the icy water below. Someone rescued the duo, but Philip has no idea whom. Meanwhile Laura remains comatose in the Tower Hospital. Dryden prays she will recover, but as each day passes he loses a bit of hope yet comes back the next day wishing anew for a miracle. When a corpse is pulled out of the River Lark, Weekly Crow reporter Philip investigates and learns of a forensic link to a desiccated body found amidst the Ely Cathedral gargoyles, last inspected three decades ago. Philip searches for incidents from that era and hones in on the 1966 "Crossroads" robbery and its nasty aftermath when the thieves had a falling out. As Laura begins showing signs of reviving, Philip sees a new connection between the corpses, his rescue from the watery grave, and his wife's condition, but even he wonders if he is paranoid or brilliant. If not for Philip, THE WATER CLOCK would be a run of the mill investigative tale. Instead he fits the bill of a strong character as he turns the tale into an exhilarating yarn due to his flaws (aqua-phobia for obvious reasons), his caring (visits his wife everyday though it seems helpless) and his professional skills that seem wasted on a circulation of seventeen-K and falling. The mysteries, past and present, are cleverly designed so that the audience receives a superbowl winning thriller. Harriet Klausner
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