The Skeleton Man

✍ Scribed by Kelly, Jim

• Book ID: 108736449
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 406 KB
• Series: Philip Dryden 5
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780141889849

✦ Synopsis

For seventeen years, the English hamlet of Jude’s Ferry has lain abandoned, used only for army training exercises. Before then, the isolated, thousand-year-old community was famous for one thing---having never recorded a single crime. But when local reporter Philip Dryden joins the army on practice maneuvers in the empty village, its spotless reputation is literally blown apart. Artillery fire reveals a hidden cellar beneath the old pub, and inside the cellar hangs a skeleton, a noose around its neck. No one knows---or will say---who the victim was.

Two days later, a terrified man is pulled from the reeds of a nearby river, with no idea of who he is or how he got there. The only name he can remember is “Jude’s Ferry.”

As Dryden searches for the secret history of the dead town, he is also witnessing a kind of rebirth: Seven years after the accident that nearly killed her, his wife, Laura, is finally emerging from coma and paralysis to begin a semblance of normal life. But will that semblance be enough for her---or for Dryden?

From Publishers Weekly

Series hero Philip Dryden pits his wits against the scattered former residents of an abandoned British village in his dramatic fifth outing (after 2007's The Coldest Blood). After an ancient hanged body is revealed in a pub cellar during artillery practice, Dryden, a skilled investigative journalist, finds that other things in the deserted village are not quite right. Why is an old tomb partly open? What happened to the cellar's owner in the evacuation? Dryden soon bypasses the police and launches his own investigation, putting his safety at risk. The large number of interviewees and suspects can be confusing; many appear only once or twice and their characters are vague, but they supply vital information for the careful armchair sleuth. Kelly's evocative descriptions of the flat and misty fenlands meander through a revealing look at the deterioration of contemporary village life under the stress of large-scale agriculture and rural depression. (Jan.)
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Review

“[Kelly] will remind many of British masters of psychological whodunits such as Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell.”
---Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Kelly enlivens his tale with a richly atmospheric setting, sharp contemporary characters, and an often biting knack for capturing the essence of people.”
---The Washington Post

“Phillip Dryden is so beautifully drawn, so credibly complex, that he makes most other contemporary mystery heroes and heroines look like fumblings on an Etch A Sketch.”
---Booklist(starred review)

“Dryden is a marvelously odd character caught in a hellish situation. [The Fire Baby] far outstrips most conventional mysteries.”
---Booklist (starred review)

“Intriguing characters and locale and wryly believable newsroom background.”
---Kirkus Reviews