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J. G. KELLY
Latest Book: THE WHITE LIE Published by Hodder & Stoughton 2023
THE SILENT CHILD Published by Hodder & Stoughton 2022.Hanna Stern, a Jewish orphan of the Holocaust, has grown up in a lonely farmhouse in the English Fens, adopted by Polish aristocrats who fled Europe in the opening weeks of the Second World War. She remembers nothing of her early years when – she is told – she was hidden away from the Nazis in Warsaw, while her parents perished in the camps. One day in 1960, when she is 21, an anonymous letter arrives which changes her life, rewriting her story: she too was sent to a death camp, and as she has survived, so too did her family. With her lover Peter – an American artist – Hanna sets out to find the truth: where is her family now, and how did they escape the fate of millions? The trail leads to Berlin – a city divided by the Cold War – where they track down witnesses from the camp. A parallel story unfolds as the reader is taken back in time to 1944 to walk with the Sterns as they arrive at Taborz – a death camp in Poland. There is turmoil as the Germans prepare to flee in the face of the advancing Red Army, while a desperate hunt is on to find gold looted from the Jews and hidden in the camp. The story of the lost Stern family – and Hanna’s quest – come together in the ruins of East Berlin. The final twist reveals not only the fate of the Stern family, but the identity of the letter-writer who set Hanna on her epic journey of self-discovery. TTHE NIGHT RAIDS Published by Allison & Busby, 2020A lone German bomber crosses the east coast of Britain on a moonless night in the long, hot summer of 1940. The pilot picks up the silver thread of a river and, following it to his target, drops his bombs over Cambridge’s rail yards. The shells fall short of their mark and land in a neighbourhood of terraced streets on the edge of the city’s medieval centre. DI Eden Brooke is first on the scene and discovers the body of an elderly woman, Nora Wylde, in a house on Elm Street, two fingers of her left hand severed, in what looks like an attempt by looters to steal her rings. When the next day Nora’s teenage granddaughter Peggy, a munitions worker, is reported missing, Brooke sets out on an inquiry which will uncover a series of cold-blooded murders. Profiteering, sabotage, and a brutal black market obscure the motives of a killer closer to home – but not before the bomber returns for a final raid. THE MATHEMATICAL BRIDGECambridge,1940. It is the first winter of the war, and snow is falling. When an evacuee drowns in the river, his body swept away, Detective Inspector Eden Brooke sets out to investigate what seems to be a vicious attack. The following night, a local electronics factory is attacked, and an Irish republican slogan is left at the scene. The IRA is campaigning to win freedom for Ulster, but why has Cambridge been chosen as a target? And when Brooke learns that the drowned boy was in the care of the close-knit local Irish Catholic community, he begins to question whether there may be a connection between the boy's death and the IRA’s so-called S-Plan – for sabotage. As more riddles emerge, can Brooke solve the mystery before the IRA closes in on its next target? BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Philip Dryden mysteries. THE WATER CLOCK (Penguin Books
2003), THE FIRE BABY (Penguin Books, 2004), THE MOON TUNNEL
(Penguin Books, 2005), THE COLDEST BLOOD (Penguin Books, 2006),
THE SKELETON MAN (Penguin Books, 2007). Overseas editions: US,
Germany, Norway, Italy, and Japan. NIGHTRISE (Severn House, 2012),
THE FUNERAL OWL (Severn House, 2013)
AUTHORS
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Jim was born in Barnet, north London, the son of a Scotland Yard detective and
wartime Commando. He was told at an early age that he could pursue any career
except - the police force. The youngest of three brothers, he studied geography –
especially the perception of landscape – at Sheffield University. After graduation he
became a reporter on the Bedfordshire Times, chief reporter of the Bedford Express,
and Deputy News Editor of the Yorkshire Evening Press. He specialized in covering
crime and politics. He took a sabbatical to study freedom of information legislation
at Wolfson College, Cambridge, before moving to the Financial Times, where he was
UK Pages Editor of the International Edition, Tax Correspondent, and finally
Education Correspondent. In 1994 he married fellow writer Midge Gillies, and
moved to the cathedral Fen city of Ely. He wrote the draft of his first book –The
Water Clock - on the daily train journeys to and from London. Jim’s sleuth in these
books was a local newspaper journalist. After winning the CWA Dagger in the Library (writing as Jim Kelly)
he was encouraged to start a new series based on the north Norfolk coast, featuring
the mis-matched police duo of DI Peter Shaw, and his side-kick DS George Valentine.
He has reflected that the first of these is a version of his father as a young man, the
second his father near retirement. It is little wonder they didn’t get on. Jim’s third
series is set in Cambridge during the Second World War, and features Inspector Eden
Brooke. The stories draw on his interest in wartime history, a passion shared with
Midge, who has published several books on the period. She is Academic Director of
Creative Writing for Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education at
Madingley Hall. They have a daughter who is studying fine art.
THE WHITE LIE. A secret diary, kept by Captain Scott, alleges he and his men did not die
of cold and hunger in their bid to conquer the South Pole in 1912 – they were murdered, and
vital clues to the identity of the killer lie still with their bodies in the Antarctic ice. Falcon
Grey, orphaned by the V2 rocket attacks of the London blitz, is left the diary in the will of
Ashley Cherry-Garrard, his guardian, and one of the survivors of the Tera Nova expedition.
He must take up the quest to find the killers. It is 1969, and the world is transfixed by another
great journey - Apollo II’s flight to the icy cold surface of the moon. With his lover Sofya
Sarkisova – a Russian scientist involved in the rival Soviet space programme – Falcon uses
the latest technology to track down the exact position of Scott’s grave. Then he must face his
own demons as he sets foot at the South Pole, aware that others will kill to stop him keeping
his promise: to take vengeance for the glorious dead.