About this item
Introducing Detective Inspector Tom Harper in a brand-new historical mystery series.June 1890. Leeds is close to breaking point. The gas workers are on strike. Supplies are dangerously low. Factories and businesses are closing the lamps are going unlit at night.Detective Inspector Tom Harper has more urgent matters on his mind. The beat constable claims eight-year-old Martha Parkinson has disappeared. Her father insists shes visiting an aunt in Halifax but Harper doesnt believe him. When Col Parkinson is found dead the following morning, the case takes on an increasing desperation.But then Harpers search for Martha is interrupted by the murder of a replacement gas worker, stabbed to death outside the Town Hall while surrounded by a hostile mob. Pushed to find a quick solution, Harper discovers that theres more to this killing than meets the eye and that there may be a connection to Marthas disappearance.
About the Author
I'm the author of the Richard Nottingham books, historical mysteries set in Leeds in the 1730s and featuring Richard Nottingham, the Constable of the city, and his deputy, John Sedgwick. The books are about more than murder. They're about the people of Leeds and the way life was - which mean full of grinding poverty for all but the wealthy. They're also about families, Nottingham and his and Sedgwick, and the way relationships grow and change, as well as the politics, when there was one law for the rich, and another, much more brutal, for everyone else.
Why Leeds? It's where I was born and raised, and that puts a place in your bones. You know it the way you can never quite know anywhere else...
In addition to this I'm also a music journalist, reviewing for magazines and online outlets, something I've been doing since the mid 1990s, specializing these days in world and roots music.
Candace Robb, author of the excellent Owen Archer and Margaret Kerr series of historical mysteries, was kind enough to say this about my work:
"Chris Nickson's years covering the music scene clearly inform his writing - his Richard Nottingham crime novels are not just stories, they're total immersion experiences in the underbelly of 18th century Leeds. Clever use of period slang and vivid detail bring to life the people, the culture, the gritty reality of early industrial culture, brutal and dehumanizing. Constable Richard Nottingham is a shrewd, appealingly human man with a keen social conscience and deep roots in the city. His family and colleagues are portrayed with a warmth and sly humor worthy of Dickens. Immensely addictive, this series just keeps getting better."
