Review: The Water Clock

The prologue of this book starts out evocative of Hitchcock’s darker and most suspenseful moments. Philip Dryden awaits a killer he’s provoked to deadly action and a flood that threatens to wipe out an entire town.

Seven days earlier, we find a different man. Newspaperman, Dryden had a routine the editor of The Crow, Septimus Henry Kaw, handed work on whatever dry assignment to him. After work, Dryden would spend a few hours with his wife. Comatose since car accident years earlier took their car into a river, Laura had been left behind by the unknown rescuer that pulled Dryden from the water. Dryden was left to live a guilt ridden and empty existence.

Dryden has refused to drive since the incident. He traveled in the passenger seat of Humphrey H. Holt’s licensed Ford Capri minicab taking a jolting ride to what Dryden hoped was a good story. Frogmen were trying to fish a sunken car out of the murk of the River Lark in England’s Cambridgeshire Fens district. When the pull the car is pulled out and boot is opened, it seems Dryden will get his story. Frozen in a block of ice is the twisted body of a man. For Dryden, this is a nice switch from the mundane politics and human-interest stories he’d gotten used to writing. What he doesn’t know is the chain of events, and murder, that this find while bring about. When a second, older corpse is found this at the site of an ancient cathedral, the mystery and menace increase. Notes are being left in Laura’s bed, warning Dryden off. He’s given another option by a local cop going up before a disciplinary board.

Detective Sergeant Stubb’s has a career on the line and asks Dryden to slant a story to make him look better in the days to come. Dryden wants a deal. He’ll write the story if Stubb’s gives him the official report of the auto accident.

Dryden continues to dig and finds a link between the two deaths and a crime that took place 30 years earlier. It seems the small town he lives in has stories that haven’t been written about and there is someone that wants it to stay that way.

This is a remarkable debut from Kelly, an education correspondent for Britain’s Financial Times. Dryden’s humor and his relationship with the almost omnipresent yet strangely taciturn cabbie adds warmth to the cold countryside painted so vividly by Kelly’s words. I eagerly await the arrival of his second in the series, Fire Baby (released in the UK February 5th).

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jennifer Jordan

Book Review: The Water Clock