Review - Death wore white

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 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.