Fire Baby [Paperback]

A comatose wife as assistant crime solver? It sounds like the ultimate gimmick, but in British author Kelly's skillful hands Laura Dryden's sporadic struggles to communicate are integral to the genesis and development of this quirky, unusual series.

A former soap opera star, Laura was left in a coma after a car accident on the Cambridgeshire Fens four years earlier. Her husband Philip left his high-powered Fleet Street job to become star reporter for the local weekly and sit by her hospital bed.

This second outing (after "The Water Clock") finds Philip at his wife's bedside on a summer day. "The figure on the bed didn't move. Its immobility was a constant in his life, like the heat of that summer, and equally oppressive." Sharing his wife's room is a local woman, Maggie Beck, who, back in 1977, recovering from the death of her parents and son, had helped Philip's newly widowed mother.

Maggie's parents and baby had been killed by the crash of a US military plane. Ironically, Maggie had rescued an American infant thrown free of the wreckage. Now dying, Maggie needs Philip's help to share a deathbed secret.

Meanwhile, as Philip attempts to track down Maggie's daughter and her American traveling companion, a man is dying of thirst, tethered in a concrete bunker, a glass of water left just beyond his reach. And a young barmaid disappears after being drugged and raped, also in a bunker, according to the pornographic photographs of her making the rounds. And a group of illegal African immigrants suffer the summer's hellish heat in the back of a locked truck container.

While Kelly tracks these story lines from various points of view, it's up to Philip to follow the leads and discover each victim's fate, with a bit of help from friends like a bird-watching police detective and an alcoholic American major, both hanging on for retirement. Then there's Humph, Philip's silent, misanthropic driver, and Laura, tapping out an occasional cryptic message between reams of gibberish.

Kelly seems equally at home with heart-shattering pain and dark, nimble humor. Philip is cynical, kind, heart sore and responsible. Prone to private self-criticisms, his bravest acts are motivated by the fear of being discovered a coward. Kelly's writing is wry and evocative and full of sharp insights and humane sensitivity. Atmospheric and insightful, this is a standout series.

Portsmouth Herald, March 13

England's Fen country has always seemed compelling and mysterious to me ... which is why I picked up Jim Kelly's first mystery THE WATER CLOCK. The protagonist, reporter Philip Dryden, was also so compelling that I went right to Kelly's second mystery, THE FIRE BABY. Once again, Kelly weaves a story involving disparate characters acting and reacting badly over decades into a satisfying mystery.

Every night for the past four years, Weekly Crow reporter Philip Dryden visits his comatose spouse Laura at Ely's Tower Hospital. Laura's current roommate, cancer victim Maggie Beck expects to die shortly. She asks Philip to carry out a death wish favor. She has made tapes of her memories especially concentrating on a 1976 plane crash at the US air base in Mildenhall in which the dying woman provides a different report than the official one. Maggie also furbishes a spin on her daughter's marriage. She wants Philip to deliver her last words to her daughter.

As Laura begins to awaken from her coma, she overhears much of what Maggie says. She struggles to warn her spouse that he could be in danger, but she is not fully conscious yet. Meanwhile Philip uncovers two homicides that he believes ties back to Maggie's death bed wish. As he investigates further someone tries to kill him. Only Laura, if she can communicate, can tell him the truth that might save his life.

This exciting thriller combines soap opera elements with a tense journalist investigation that grips the reader mostly because the audience will like and admire Philip and hope that Laura recovers in time to warn him. The story line is at its best when Philip is investigating Maggie's contention and other underbelly stories. When the tale shifts to the hospital scenes the plot loses momentum but adds depth to the beleaguered hero. THE FIRE BABY is a terrific opening novel that hopefully has sequels with a healing Laura at Philip's side.

Harriet Klausner