Death Wore White

Some books have a premise with draws me in like the proverbial moth to a flame. Death Wore White offered a modern version of a locked room mystery in which a handful of people are trapped in their cars during blizzard and one of drivers has a chisel plunged into his eye seemingly in full view of everyone else but no one saw anything. We won’t ponder what it says about me that I rubbed my hands with glee when I read a blurb like that.

The book turned out to be a more standard police procedural than the blurb suggested (how shocking, a misleading book blurb). It’s a solid example of its sub genre but as the vast majority of the action takes place long after the blizzard-trapped people have gone home it wasn’t really the book I was show more expecting.

The two policemen at the heart of the are quite fascinating. Peter Shaw is something of a hotshot: a forensic artist, rescue boat crewman and loving husband and father as well as being a Detective Inspector. Shaw’s father was a policeman too until he was accused of planting evidence when investigating the case of a murdered boy ten years previously. Shaw has now been partnered with George Valentine who had been his father’s partner during that disastrous case. Valentine has been demoted and must now take orders from his old partner’s son. The two men work through initial distrust and hostility towards something of a grudging, though sporadic, respect as the book progresses and the relationship between these two is the kind of thing that will bring me back to more books in this series.

I didn’t find the story itself quite as compelling. The plot is terribly complicated and I never became fully engaged with it so had to re-read several portions in order for the chain of events to make sense, especially for the first half of the book. It seemed to me that there were a lot of events crammed into the story and all, apart from the minor thread relating to the old case that ruined the career of Shaw’s father and George Valentine, were treated fairly superficially. With a few less dead bodies and overlapping crimes to investigate there might have been time for a closer look at the victims or the motivations of the criminals (of whom there were many).

However, I did enjoy the writing style of Death Wore White and the main characters were interesting enough for me to want to read more about them so I will seek out, Death Watch, the second book in this series which is due for release this year. show less

Love puzzles, police procedurals, and your classic locked room mystery? Jim Kelly introduces a new team of detectives, Inspector Peter Shaw and Sergeant George Valentine, in Death Wore White, sent out into a blizzard to track down a hazardous waste barrel on a Norfolk beach they start uncovering a string of bodies instead. Shaw and Valentine probably should never have been paired up, they have a long history and it isn't all pleasant, trust will be one of the many missing pieces in solving this complicated puzzle.

All police procedurals have common elements but Kelly's twist in this book is the nod to the locked room mystery genre, which is pulled off rather cleverly, eight cars trapped by the snow and of course the requisite body show more -brutally and ironically mutilated. The story is much larger than this central crime and the past and present are drawn closer as Shaw and Valentine come together to track the murderer.

Kelly brings an original voice to this genre, decidedly British and a bit bleak, building his characters and settings with the small details that leave the reader wanting more of both Shaw and Valentine. The descriptive language can be odd at times but chalk it up to indecipherable British idioms. show less

This is the first book in a new series by Jim Kelly whose books I have enjoyed in the past. This is a police procedural set in King's Lynn, Norfolk and is based on a tremendous set up; a series of cars are trapped by a tree fall in the midst of a blizzard and there is a body. What follows is an excellent who-dun-it and why, with twists, turns and red herrings and a series of intriguing characters, including the twin series protagonists, who have their own history and a cold case with personal connections. I really enjoyed it and have a,lready acquired the sequel.

First Line: The Alpha Romeo ran a lipstick-red smear across a sepia landscape.

At 5:15 PM, Harvey Ellis was stranded in a line of eight cars by a blizzard on a Norfolk coast road. Three hours later, Harvey Ellis was dead, stabbed at the wheel of his truck. His killer has achieved the impossible: killing without being seen and leaving not one footprint in the snow.

This is merely the beginning of an exasperating investigation. The crime scene is melting, the murderer has vanished, and the witnesses have scattered. It's going to take everything D.I. Peter Shaw and D.S. George Valentine have to piece all the facts together and solve the case.

Shaw and Valentine are a very good pairing of opposites. Shaw is the young whiz kid on the fast track show more to chief constable and beyond. Known as "Check It" at the station, he's known for believing in the forensics and for checking each and every bit of evidence time and again.

His new partner, D.S. George Valentine, is at the end of a long career. He's a dinosaur, believing that people-- not forensics-- are at the heart of each investigation. Shaw and Valentine are both under a cloud: Shaw's father (and Valentine's former partner) left the force after it was proven that the pair did not follow procedure and seriously botched the outcome of an important case. The present-day partnership of Shaw and Valentine have to come to grips with the old case as well as solving the new.

Although characters and the weather play important roles in this book, by far the star of the show is the tightly wound and smartly executed plot. Clues are subtly planted and can be easily missed, and even though I eventually figured it all out, I refuse to claim any sort of victory because my enlightenment occurred so close to the end.

If you're in the mood to read about a couple of indefatigable coppers who are faced with an Agatha Christie-like locked room mystery in the snow, locate a copy of Death Wore White. (Just make sure the heating isn't on the blink, and you have a spare blanket just in case!) show less

Jim Kelly, one suspects, looks at the television schedule every week and wonders why the hell there is not an adaptation of his work filling that weekend two hour quality crime drama slot. When you’ve finished reading ‘Death wore white’, you wonder that too. It ticks all of the boxes to make comfortable Saturday night viewing; chalk and cheese detectives paired together? Check. Photogenic scenery? Check. Bizarre crime? Check. Cool car? Check. ‘Death wore white’ should also be available in HD.

Kelly fans have already met DCI Peter Shaw, in ‘The Skeleton Man’. This was the latest (but not, let’s hope, the last) of Kelly’s novels charting the adventures of Ely newspaper reporter and sleuth Philip Dryden. The contrast show more between the two men was marked in that novel, with Shaw sharp, cool and in control. One did not get a sense then that Shaw was a character waiting to emerge not so much in his own right, but in his own book, but it’s good to see that now that he has, he is still the same Shaw we met in the Dryden book and has not had to undergo any of the tweaks authors feel are necessary when they move characters centre stage.

When it comes to continuity, crime fiction fans get even more outraged than fantasy fiction fans when characters change from book to book, (after all, if the body starts in the library, then it should damn well stay in the library all through the book). (Fantasy fans, of course, usually track the progress of their characters from book to book, or even trilogy to trilogy – ‘hold on, since when is Prince Thrunbar of Kronstop an only child, I’m sure a sister was mentioned in the first book of the Cycle of the Shadowlords? Ahhhhhg, continuity breakdown, lazy author!’

The move to a policeman solving crimes is, no doubt, a refresh for Kelly and refreshing for the reader; I mean, it’s good to actually read about policemen solving crimes, instead of talented amateurs.

This is more than a whodunit, it’s a how the hellcouldsomeonehavedunnit? In a chain of cars trapped in a blizzard, somebody is murdered, but nobody saw a murderer and there are no footprints, so what’s going on? The mystery is unravelled by inches.

There is more than a mesh of crime against a scenic background going on here. The characters, although idiosyncratic, are very well drawn with their quirks and foibles pulling together to make some very human figures who also just happen to be bloody good coppers.

There are enough quirks happening here to thoroughly entertain too. I love the way that characters communicate with each other by picture messaging on mobile phones – a picture of a pint of stout with a shamrock in the top means ‘I am down the pub and will be some time’.

Because this is Jim Kelly, it also ticks all the boxes that make this a very, very good thriller. Kelly weaves a tale of forensic police procedure through the twilight landscape of the north Norfolk coast, in the snow. The snow might have been a stretch before the events of February 2009, but not much of one from the way Kelly describes it. There is also nod to cockling, gangmasters and the hidden economy, bringing a hint of menace to the surroundings.

Kelly’s trademarks are in evidence here. There’s the frailty (and occasional grotesque deformity), with one of the detectives paying the price for a lifelong smoking habit and there’s Kelly’s eye for the macabre too, with corpses found with self-inflicted bite marks and the main character going through the novel with an eye patch after an accident.

Kelly’s love of past events impacting on the present is also here, but subtly. Instead of driving the plot, they provide motivation for the main character as well as providing a sub-plot that leaves you eagerly awaiting the next DI Peter Shaw book and makes the television detective fan think ‘ah, story arc, series one’.

Shaw is without a doubt my new favourite RNLI volunteer cyclopean copper struggling to get out of his father’s shadow (while clearing his reputation) while solving baffling crimes with his irascible partner. show less

The snows of January complicate the investigations of three mysterious deaths in Jim Kelly’s marvelous police procedural set on northern Norfolk coast of England where Death Wore White. Kelly’s well-developed characters and atmospheric location drive a complex plot that should satisfy the pickiest of mystery buffs.

As upstart Detective Inspector Peter Shaw and embattled aging Detective Sergeant George Valentine examine a toxic waste drum drifting near shore off Ingol Beach, they spot a child’s raft floating in the waves carrying one dead male with a deep human bite mark on one arm—the first of three bodies that will mark these two mismatched partners’ first week of working together. At the same time not a half-mile away from show more the two detectives on the beach, on a road known as Siberia Belt, eight vehicles are trapped behind a fallen tree, unable to advance or retreat as a blizzard moves in from the sea blanketing everything in white. When Shaw and Valentine arrive a few hours later to aid the stranded motorists, they discover the lone occupant of the first vehicle with a chisel protruding from his left eye—clearly dead, and just as clearly the victim of murder. Later, on a sandbar known as Styleman’s Middle, another body is discovered buried in sand with only the head and a single foot and hand showing. Are the three deaths related, or are they each separate cases? Surrounded by death and snow, detectives Shaw and Valentine struggle to find a way to work together despite a shared history with Shaw’s now-deceased father that has mysteries of its own.

Kelly’s masterful manipulation of the events will keep readers guessing up to the end. We can only hope this is the start of new series featuring these two crime-solvers. show less

A line of eight cars is trapped in a blizzard on a Norfolk coast road in the intriguingly named Siberia Belt between Cromer and King's Lynn. They've been diverted into this by-road by an AA road works sign that mysteriously disappears. The passage of the truck at the head of the line is blocked by a fallen tree, showing all the signs of having been deliberately chopped down. And three hours after the blizzard began Harvey Ellis, the driver of the truck, is dead. And no-one saw anything. But Harvey Ellis has been murdered.

Two bodies are separately found at low tide in the coastal cockle pits. As these bodies are identified DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine discover they have connections with people in the line of stranded cars.

Jim show more Kelly is an established author with 5 novels already under the belt (the Philip Dryden series), and in 2006 he won the 2006 CWA Dagger in the Library for the series. DEATH WORE WHITE is the beginning of a new series, with a second title promised for 2010.

Not only has Kelly created an interesting puzzle in DEATH WORE WHITE - who kills Harvey Ellis if no-one saw anything - but he has created a fascinating new detective duo in Shaw and Valentine. These two already have a history. Valentine worked with Shaw's father Jack, on a case which spelled the end of Jack Shaw's career, and saw Valentine demoted. Peter Shaw comes into the series already fully fledged as it were - the new style of detective, careful, determined not to make his father's mistakes, but an artist who can draw his own identikit pictures, and a boatie with a hovercraft licence.

You've probably detected that I found this a very enjoyable read, and I'll certainly now try to get hold of the Philip Dryden titles, as well as look out for the next in the Shaw and Valentine series: DEATH WATCH. show less