Jim Kelly

Author Information
Jim Kelly's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    24 Books (3 Series)
  • First Book:
    December 2003
  • Latest Book:
    March 2026
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About the Author

Jim Kelly was born in Barnet, Herts. On April 1st 1957. He went to Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, and Finchley Grammar School. After spending three years at Sheffield University he spent a year looking for a job, working as a labourer to earn money. In 1979 he finally got a job in newspapers, on the Bedfordshire Times where he spent five years as a local reporter. He has also worked The Yorkshire Evening Press in York, and Fleet Street in London. He started writing novels, the first being ‘The Water Clock’ published in 2001, written on a laptop on the 6.45 out of Kings Cross. Writing at home became Claustrophobic so he got an allotment, and set up a decent shed with heating and windows as the ideal “remote Office”

Full Series List in Order

A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery

1 - Death Wore White (Jun-2009)
2 - Death Watch (May-2010)
3 - Death Toll (Jun-2011)
4 - Death's Door (May-2012)
5 - At Death's Window (Feb-2015)
6 - Death on Demand (Nov-2015)
7 - Death Ship (Dec-2016)

Nighthawk

1 - The Great Darkness (Apr-2018)
2 - The Mathematical Bridge (Feb-2019)
3 - The Night Raids (Feb-2020)
4 - The Cambridge Siren (May-2025)
5 - The American Suspect (Mar-2026)

A Philip Dryden Mystery

1 - The Water Clock (Dec-2003)
2 - The Fire Baby (Dec-2004)
3 - The Moon Tunnel (Dec-2005)
4 - The Coldest Blood (Jan-2007)
5 - The Skeleton Man (Jan-2008)
6 - Nightrise (Jan-2013)
7 - The Funeral Owl (Dec-2013)

Books in Order: 24 titles

The book list is sorted in publication date order - newest first. You can sort the list by clicking on the Sort button. To see a simple list or a cover view list, click on the icons below.

  • The American Suspect

    Nighthawk - 5

    May 1942. Thousands of American GIs are stationed across eastern England building airfields to bomb Germany. Cambridge is a 'liberty town' - a hot spot for 'Yanks' on leave. DI Eden Brooke is called to the aerodrome five miles east of the city when t...

  • The Cambridge Siren

    Nighthawk - 4

    Autumn 1941. As the war continues and Cambridge endures nightly air raids, its bomb shelters are packed with those driven by the sound of the siren. At dawn, a young man is found dead in a shadowy corner, apparently a suicide, yet Detective Inspector...

  • The Trinity Shelter

    Autumn, 1941. The third year of war and still the siren sounds, driving the people of Cambridge from their beds to trudge to one of the city's crowded bomb shelters. At dawn, the body of a young man is found in a shadowy corner. Everything points to ...

  • Granny's Special Delivery

    Aisling embarks on a fun filled adventure from London to a remote part of Ireland.Living with her family in England, Aisling, aged 5, really misses her Granny who lives in the west of Ireland. She enjoys visiting for holidays in the summer but is so ...

  • The Night Raids

    Nighthawk - 3

    A 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 bomb over Cambridge's rail yards. The shell falls s...

  • The Doolittle Irony

    Japanese-Americans contributed mightily to the U.S. victory in WWII. One young Nisei may even have saved Doolittle’s Raid from disaster. His story was never told, possibly because it would have exposed how unjust the U.S. Government had been to int...

  • The Mathematical Bridge

    Nighthawk - 2

    Cambridge, 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 deliberate attack. The following night, a lo...

  • Living with the Paranormal

    The story begins with Jim’s introduction to paranormal activities and spirits by becoming involved in current events happening at the local spirit-inhabited “Haunted Hinsdale House.” Shortly after this, Jim was taking some photographs and was a...

  • Pitchman's Blues: Stories

    This short story collection offers snapshots of a life. A kid is set up by an old uncle to think he’s going to be scalped. Seeing demons in every shadow a few nights later, he’s told by an older cousin it was all a joke, that adults always seem t...



  • The Great Darkness

    Nighthawk - 1

    1939, Cambridge. The opening weeks of the Second World War, and the first blackout - The Great Darkness - covers southern England, enveloping the city. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke, a wounded hero of the Great War, takes his nightly dip in the coo...

  • Death Ship

    A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery - 7

    An explosion on a Norfolk beach leads to far-reaching consequences for detectives Shaw and Valentine. When an explosion rips across Hunstanton Beach on the north Norfolk coast, an abandoned Second World War bomb is assumed to be the cause ... but ...

  • Death on Demand

    A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery - 6

    When the newspapers turn up to cover Ruby Bright’s 100th birthday, they find her seaside care home is a murder scene. Someone spirited Ruby away by wheelchair down to the water’s edge on the idyllic north Norfolk coast, and strangled her. But why...

  • At Death's Window

    A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery - 5

    When a body is discovered beneath the waves off Scolt Head Island, the contents of the dead man’s pockets lead Detective Inspector Peter Shaw to suspect an outbreak of ‘samphire wars’: a turf battle for control of the prized sea asparagus which...

  • The Funeral Owl

    A Philip Dryden Mystery - 7

    When a reader contacts local newspaper The Crow to report a rare sighting of the Boreal or so-called 'Funeral' owl, the paper's editor Philip Dryden has a sense of foreboding. For the Funeral Owl is said to be an omen of death. It's already proving t...

  • Nightrise

    A Philip Dryden Mystery - 6

    By popular demand, Philip Dryden returns in an intriguing new fenland mystery. Journalist Philip Dryden is shocked to be informed by police that his father has been killed in a car accident -- he drowned during the fenland floods of 1977, 35 years...

  • Death's Door

    A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery - 4

    An idyllic island holds a dark secret.... On a hot August day in 1994, 76 holidaymakers travel to an island off the North Norfolk coast. Only 75 return alive--a young man is murdered, the case left unsolved. Twenty years later, using state-of-the-ar...

  • Death Toll

    A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery - 3

    Bodies are being exhumed at King's Lynn's cemetery, the bones moved to higher ground to avoid flooding. But when the coffin of murdered pub landlady Nora Tilden is hauled up into the light there's a grim discovery; the twisted corpse of a young black...

  • Death Watch

    A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery - 2

    Rookie detective Peter Shaw teams up with his father's tough expartner to investigate both a gruesome series of present-day murders and some unfinished business from the past....

  • Death Wore White

    A Detective Peter Shaw Mystery - 1

    Det. Inspector Peter Shaw and veteran officer, Det. Sgt. George Valentine are sent to look for containters of toxic waste that may have been dumped on the Norfolk, English shore. While they are there they find the body of a man in a raft that is wash...



  • The Skeleton Man

    A Philip Dryden Mystery - 5

    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 ...

  • The Coldest Blood

    A Philip Dryden Mystery - 4

    A man lies hidden in an abandoned boat. Stifling his own screams, he draws a knife across his arm, letting the blood flow free. Soon he'll be dead -- and life can begin again. Three decades later, small-town newspaper reporter Philip Dryden is ...

  • The Moon Tunnel

    A Philip Dryden Mystery - 3

    Crawling on elbows and knees, a man slowly inches forward, making his way through a cramped space and suffocating darkness. He doesn't know that someone is watching, and in a flash of light, his journey is over. Now, fifty years later, small-town...

  • The Fire Baby

    A Philip Dryden Mystery - 2

    In the stifling heat wave of June 1976, an American plane crashes on the Cambridgeshire Fens, the point of impact the remote Black Bank Farm. Out of the flames walks a young woman, Maggie Beck, clutching a baby in her arms. Twenty-seven years late...

  • The Water Clock

    A Philip Dryden Mystery - 1

    A mutilated body found frozen in a block of ice. A second body perched high in a cathedral, riding a gargoyle -- hidden for more than thirty years. When forensic evidence links both victims to one crime, reporter Philip Dryden knows he's on to a terr...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Jim Kelly has published 24 books.

The next book by Jim Kelly, The American Suspect, will be published in March 2026.

The first book by Jim Kelly, The Water Clock, was published in December 2003.

Yes. Jim Kelly has 3 series.
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