Meet the Author: Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly is a British writer who is based in Ely. After a successful career in newspapers he started writing crime novels. The Water Clock featuring Philip Dryden was his first and it was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel of 2002. Since then he has written several books in the successful DI Peter Shaw series. His latest series Nighthawk set in wartime Cambridge features DI Eden Brooke. Jim's most recent book is The Night Raids. Our waiting lists for Jim's books have been building steadily so many of you have already discovered his work. If you have not, we can highly recommend them!

1. Who were your literary heroes as you were growing up and when did you first start writing?

Growing up I’d go for Mervyn Peake – the Gormenghast Trilogy – the Lord of the Rings – and Sci-Fi generally – mainly Arthur C Clarke, John Wyndham, Philip K Dick. Space travel was another favourite, and the first book I read in one go was Tass and the Postal Rocket. This had a ‘Tintin’ style rocket on the front. I started with Blyton of course – and the Mystery of the Disappearing Cat is still a crime classic, following as it does the rules of the Golden Age ‘Locked Room’ mystery. I was given a typewriter at the age of 11 – it is under my desk as I write this. I wrote a novel called The Gospel According to Judas on it – the text ran to five pages, and I have it somewhere. Good title!

2. You worked in Fleet Street for the Financial Times at the end of the 1980s. In the light of all the changes to newspapers and how news is delivered now how do you look back on that era?

Fondly. The investment in journalists was incredible at the FT and still is to some extent. The only ‘newspaper’ with more foreign correspondents was Pravda – and they were all spies! I went to the FT from the Yorkshire Evening Press where I was deputy news editor. On the average day there were 12 reporters in the newsroom plus two on the news desk. I doubt if there is a newspaper in Britain outside London and a few big cities now which could boast such resources. It meant that we could send reporters out to cover news – not rely on press releases or phone conversations. There were also four photographers on duty at any one time. It’s a different world. During the Covid emergency I have relied on digital news and without it we would be poorer – it is best at the national and international level. I read the FT online, the New York Times, and the Guardian in paper format over breakfast.

3. The Water Clock was your first book (2001). What were the main differences between writing journalistic prose and a full length novel?

Not too many. Colin Dexter – who had the same editor as I did – told me that the secret to success was short chapters. So I treated each one as a self-contained story. I like spare, efficient, pacey prose. The content of a crime novel – the law, courts, police, crimes – is everyday stuff for a reporter. My style has changed over time, but it was a good place to start. More than 25 years in newspapers gives you plenty of material for books.

4. What is your writing routine? Do you still have the writing shed on the allotment?

When the lockdown struck I moved quickly to make sure my shed was still in working order. I got the original builders to come back and replace the roof, then I put in a gas fire and started digging. It was a blessing. The rules mean you can work on the allotment as it comes under agriculture. So I spent a lot of time out there, especially in all that sunny weather. I have a new book as a result, and a bumper crop of potatoes, sweetcorn and runner beans. I am back to digging this week – and trying to start the next book.

5. How did D.I. Eden Brooke come to be created?

I think he is an amalgam of Lawrence of Arabia and Rupert Brooke – mostly the second. I wanted to write something set in Cambridge but at the same time was desperate to avoid the Oxbridge cliches. I’m interested in the Second World War – my wife’s an historian and writer – and I knew the period held plenty of material ripe for fiction. The river is the heart of the old city, and I would have called him RIVER if the name hadn’t been used on TV already. So from RIVER I went to BROOK – which led to Grantchester and the poet. I decided to make him a veteran of the Great War, and to avoid cliches yet again, went for the Middle East not the Western Front. This led to Lawrence – who looks like Brooke. I think the combination brings together bravery, and moral values, and a love of landscape.

6. Brooke returns in your latest book The Night Raids. Can you tell us a bit about it and what it was like to write?

Cambridge was bombed in the war, and there were frequent air raid warnings, but it was not on the ‘front line’ – so I held back on that aspect of the war for the first two books. But with The Night Raids I wanted to use a bombing raid as a trigger for a series of events. One aspect of the London blitz which I always found disturbing was the way in which a wrecked house reveals its secrets – the rooms within, the hidden lives. I was also keen to tell both sides of the story, and so the book began by imagining the raid from the point of view of the German pilot, and then returning periodically to see how his life had changed, and eventually flying with him on a second, and final raid. Again, the river is central, making an early appearance as the silver thread which guides the Heinkel to its target.

7. Is there anything you can share with us about your latest project?

I have just signed a deal with Hodder & Stoughton for an historical thriller. This should appear next year. At the moment the details are under wraps!

8. What is on your current 'to read' pile?

I’ve always wanted to write a thriller set in 1969 and based on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, and the concurrent Luna 16 mission to put a Soviet ‘lander’ on the moon, pick up rocks, and fly back. These two craft were on the moon’s surface at the same time, and I think this offers scope for a kind of historical piece of science fiction. I’m reading anything I can about the space race – including the excellent The Story of Jodrell Bank by Roger Piper. In fiction I’ve just read Murder in Crown Passage by Miles Burton – published in 1939. Lovely escapism. And I’m re-reading The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, because it’s about a modern sleuth uncovering an historical mystery, which is what I’m toying with for the space book. Tey’s reconstruction of the murder of the Princes in the Tower is unbeatable.

9. Do you have a message for your Suffolk readers?

Books are a gift in these times. Reading is a wonderful way to self-isolate.

10. Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

My wife grew up in Brantham, Suffolk, where her parents ran the local grocery store, and she never tires of telling me that she saw Ipswich Town win the FA Cup in 1978 at Wembley!