Customer Reviews

The Skeleton Man (Charnwood Large Print)

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The fifth in the mystery series set in East Anglia with detective Philip Dryden. The plot is competent but overly complex. Anyway, it kept me reading to find out what happened -- and also what is happening with Laura, as readers of previous novels in the series will understand.

The best thing about the book is the setting in the fens (many novels have been saved for me by the strong evocation of an unfamiliar part of the world). The author makes the fens vivid and real. He keeps commenting on how the roads go in a straight line for miles, not unfamiliar for someone living in the US midwest, although here it is not so DAMP.

The military exercise focuses on the abandoned small village of Jude's Ferry off of Whittlesea Mere. Reporting on the war games is The Crow journalist Philip Dryden, who has learned the ghost town had never reported any official crime in its millennium of existence. Following the artillery shelling, a shocking sight surfaces when a grave underneath the cellar of what had been a pub has been opened. The skeletal remains of a person hung to death are found.

Not expecting much from the police on this cold make that frozen case, Dryden cannot resist learning the truth about the ancient skeleton and who uncovered the tomb and why. However, the former residents are not only scattered those he interviews remain reticent not offering him much in the way of useful information. However, Dryden obstinately keeps digging until someone begins to think he is getting to close and plans on him being the second victim in the history of Jude's Ferry.

This complex somewhat convoluted investigative tale is a superb whodunit as Dryden struggles with finding a nano clue at a time. The support cast is in the quadrillions with most providing cameo appearances in response to the reporter's inquiry. This makes it difficult to keep score yet for those who relish solving the case, they are each critical in what may seem incognizant as a puzzle part, but the whole is needed for lucid resolution. Although how Jim Kelly kept track is beyond me, THE SKELTON MAN is a terrific look at rural England where local talk is not a repression but a depression.

Harriet Klausner

First Sentence: The Capri shook to the sound of snoring, and through the fly-spattered windscreen of the mini-cab Philip Dryden contemplated the Fen horizon.

Journalist Philip Dryden accompanies the Territorial Army on a war games exercise. Jude's Ferry is now deserted but was a small village in Cambridgeshire which, for 1000-years, never recorded a single crime. Until now. When an errant shell hits the old pub, a cellar, unmarked on ordinance maps, is uncovered as are the remains of someone who died by hanging. It might have been a suicide except for the marks on the ribs which indicate the victim was stabbed.

This was not my favorite book by Jim Kelley. I found there were too many characters, and few about whom I cared, yet each was critical to the resolution of the story. Even the two of the three primary characters seemed diminished. The relationship between Philip and his driver, Humph, was there but didn't have the level of import as in previous books. Now that things have changed with Philip's wife, Laura, some of the emotion impact of the series is gone. What I do like is that Kelly has allowed his protagonist to have his phobias and weaknesses.

The plot was convoluted but purposefully so. I was taken down one path, only to be turned to another and another. It worked but, at the same time, wasn't as satisfying it perhaps should have been.

One element at which Kelly excels is description. I love that the books are set in Fens near Ely. For the armchair traveler, Kelly evokes the region in an atmospheric and haunting manner.

While this may not have been my favorite book of the series, it was still a very enjoyable read in a series with which I shall continue.

THE SKELETON MAN (Unl Inv/Journalist-Phillip Dryden-Cambridgeshire, England-Cont) - G+
Kelly, Jim - 5th in series
Michael Joseph, 2007, UK Hardcover - ISBN: 9780718149482

Peaks too soon.

Skeleton Man follows journalist Philip Dryden on a military training excercise that comprises shelling the hell out of an 'abandoned' (military forced the civies out) town.

Due to an accidental shell hitting a church (yeah that never happens) a skeleton is revealed in a hidden cellar and Dryden is pulled into a mystery that will shock you to your core!!!

Or not

The inital scenes of Skele-Man are well done. The location and army setup feel authentic and we're genuinely intrigued when the skeleton is found. Set with a backstory of a former township still bitter about the forced evaculation the story seemed like a winner.

Then, spoil for choice the train distintergrates on the rails. Dryden, talks to a farmer who sells animals to laboratories and is threatened by activists, an amnesiac man in found in a river with missing fingers. There was an unsolved missing persons case from around who might be the skeleton.

And a whole lot of back story that started getting too repeditive to focus on; someone was pregnant too young, one brother had money the other didn't, a half-wit was involved.

In the end the ony relief is finishing the book, some scenes were done well, others were very cardboard and had sometimes confusing token 'scene setters' thrown in. When Dryden leaves the interview with the laboratory animal farmer, guinea pigs actually squeal as he exits (Have the guinea pigs stopped screaming yet Clarece?)

Perhaps realising that the animal activist part of the plot doesn't really fit, a vomit-worthy cliche bad guy confronts Dryden, rambles in a psudo-master mind blabber and is only seen again in the post-script when he is mentioned as being arrested easily by police. Oh the suspensful danger

There is a touching subplot of Dryden's wife's recovery from a coma, however it gets little screen-time and so isn't enough to sell this book. Perhaps the earlier books in the series are much better, but not this one.

Fans of Kelly's Philip Dryden series will be happy to find the journalist's injured wife, Laura, continuing to make strides in her recovery while newcomers will be quickly brought up to speed.

A former London newsman, Dryden dropped out of the fast lane to take a job on a rural weekly after an auto accident put his wife into a seven-year coma. But Dryden takes his low-pressure job seriously, keeping his nose for news sharp and his observational skills honed.

The story opens with Dryden tagging along on a military training exercise in an abandoned village. The tiny village of Jude's Ferry - famous for never having reported a single crime - was requisitioned by the military 17 years before, its population expelled.

The percussive shelling of this abandoned hamlet in the flat, gray, watery fens will hold readers in its grip even before an errant shell blasts a long-hidden pub cellar, exposing a skeleton hanging by the neck from a hook in the ceiling. "The cellar, uncorked like a buried bottle, gave off the stale breath of the years."

A brief preface has already given us the scene, 17 years earlier, 12 people gathered around the victim, the ugly crime. But even as Dryden begins to speculate, dig and angle the story to get himself a scoop in the national dailies, some human fingers are found on the riverbank; shortly afterward the fingers' owner turns up in the river - alive.

The unidentified injured man has amnesia. Dryden, naturally, is skeptical, but the man is terrified and genuinely bewildered. As Dryden digs, he discovers that quite a few of Jude's Ferry's residents have not been seen since the village's forced evacuation.

As Dryden tracks down the remaining villagers the web of secrets and enmities grows more dense and tangled. Meanwhile Laura becomes a confidante of the hospitalized amnesiac.

Atmospheric, incisive and beautifully written, Kelly has another winner in an exceptional series.