


Books in series

#1
Death Wore White
2008
At 5.15 p.m. Harvey Ellis was trapped - stranded in a line of eight cars by a blizzard on a Norfolk coast road.
At 8.15 p.m. Harvey Ellis was dead - viciously stabbed at the wheel of his truck.
And his killer has achieved the impossible: striking without being seen, and without leaving a single footprint in the snow . . .
For DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine it's only the start of an infuriating investigation. The crime scene is melting, the murderer has vanished, the witnesses are dropping like flies. And the body count is on the rise . . .

#2
Death Watch
2010
"Ever since the days of Agatha Christie, the great divide in the British detective story has been between plot and character...The novels of Jim Kelly are. . . a find." -The New York Times Book Review
Rookie detective Peter Shaw teams up with his father's tough ex-partner to investigate both a gruesome series of present-day murders and some unfinished business from the past, in Death Watch, the second book in the Detective Shaw Mystery series.

#3
Death Toll
2011
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 man, killed by a billhook blow to the head, and dumped in the grave on the night Nora was buried twenty-eight years earlier. The police are baffled by a bewildering and brutal murder.
Who was this young man? Was he the victim of a racist crime? When DI Peter Shaw, DS George Valentine and their team are put on the case their investigation first leads them to The Flask, Nora's pub just along the riverbank, where her family hides more than one dark secret and it's soon clear no one can be trusted. Will Shaw and Valentine be able to get to the shocking truth behind the murder before it's too late and the ghosts from the past claim another victim?

#4
Death's Door
2012
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-art forensics, the DNA results of a bloodsoaked towel prompts DI Peter Shaw to summon all 75 original suspects to a mass screening. but one of them, the beautiful Marianne Osbourne, is found dead in her bed. Is there a link to the 1994 murder? DI Shaw and DS Valentine become immersed in the dark secrets of an isolated community.

#5
At Death's Window
2015
A Shaw & Valentine mystery"
When a body is discoveredbeneath 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 sells for a small fortune along the affluent North Norfolk coast. Or does the killer merely want it to look that way?
Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant George Valentine is investigating a series of break-ins targeted at wealthy second-home owners. And a lethal strain of adulterated cocaine is flooding the streets of nearby Lynn, leaving devastation in its wake.
Then the second body is found and the simmering tensions underpinning this remote coastal community come bursting into the open with devastating consequences.

#6
Death on Demand
2015
This is the stunning new Shaw & Valentine mystery. 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 kill a harmless centurion? As Detective Inspector Shaw and Detective Sergeant Valentine investigate, it's clear Ruby wasn't the first victim, and nor is she the last. All trails seem to lead back to the old Parkwood Springs estate, close to the docklands. There's only one way in and one way out of the estate - through the derelict Lister Tunnel. But what is the secret within...?

#7
Death Ship
2016
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 is it? Could there be a connection with the new pier being built - and the increasingly bitter campaign to halt its construction?
At the same time, DI Shaw and DS Valentine are on the hunt for an elderly female killer with a uniquely macabre method of despatch. And a 63-year-old Dutch engineer is missing, presumed drowned . . . but where is the body?
All seemingly unrelated investigations - but in each case nothing is as it seems. To find the answers, Shaw must delve into the past, and a mystery that has remained unsolved for more than sixty years.
Author

Jim Kelly
Author · 16 books
Jim Kelly is a journalist and education correspondent for the Financial Times. He lives in Ely with the biographer Midge Gilles and their young daughter. The Water Clock, his first novel, was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best first crime novel of 2002. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.