Jim Kelly

Jim Kelly was born in 1957, and is the son of a Scotland Yard detective. His first crime mystery The Water Clock was published in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasy award for best debut. In 2006 he won the Crime Writers’ Assocation’s dagger-in-the-library award (chosen by readers) for the Philip Dryden novels, set in the Black Fen of Cambridgeshire. In 2011 Death Watch, the second in the Shaw & Valentine series, set on the north Norfolk coast, won the 2011 New Angle prize for literature. The north Norfolk series is in development with ITV. His books have been translated into Japanese, Italian, Dutch, German and Norwegian, and are published in the USA.

Jim worked for the Financial Times for 15 years, editing the paper’s UK coverage in its international edition, then writing as tax, and then education correspondent. Previously he was deputy news editor of the Yorkshire Evening Press. He is a former Press Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He went to Sheffield University, where he studied geography, specifically the perception of landscape. He now lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire, with the writer Midge Gillies and their daughter.