The Fire Baby: Jim Kelly

Almost three decades ago, a USAF transport crashes into a farmhouse. There are two survivors: Maggie Beck, daughter of the farmers, and Lydon Koskinski, an infant that Maggie found in the wreckage of the plane. Fast forward to present day and Maggie is dying of cancer. Maggie's dawning mortality produces confessions and secrets that stem from that night, and the only person who hears them is her comatose roommate, Laura Dryden, wife of investigative reporter Phillip.

Phillip, meanwhile, is investigating several other stories, including immigrant smuggling and a missing barmaid, and the threads of these seemingly unrelated stories keep getting tangled. When crucial information is held only by a comatose woman, is there anything that can be done to get her to communicate? And just how are these secrets going to affect the lives of Lydon and everybody else who's been drawn into this web of scandal?

The Fire Baby is Jim Kelly's second Phillip Dryden thriller and let me get this right out in the open: I don't like the writing style. This book is a marked improvement over The Water Clock (the first Dryden novel, also ranted about by yours truly on bookfetish.org), but I still do feel the style of prose fits the narrative. Jim Kelly is a fantastic writer, but he needs to leave the flowery, analogy-ridden stuff to the literature section. I guess maybe Kelly knows what he's doing, he's got like a half dozen Dryden novels out there, but I just can't get wrapped up in a thriller that reads like an epic poem. In my opinion, atmosphere and mystery is sacrificed for style and that's not something that really flies in this genre. In the Fire Baby's favor, though, I have to admit that the writing, narrative and pacing flow a lot more naturally here than they did in The Water Clock. If this improvement keeps up, I might actually start enjoying these Dryden thrillers and feel bad about these venomous reviews. That's not to say I'm waiting impatiently for book three, but you never know. Cross your fingers for me, or something.

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Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (June 2, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0141009349
ISBN-13: 978-0141009346