About this item
The third intriguing historical mystery to feature Detective Inspector Tom Harper Leeds, England. October, 1891. An unclaimed parcel at the Central Post Office is discovered to contain the decomposing body of a baby boy. It's a gruesome case for DI Tom Harper. Then a fire during the night destroys half the railway station. The next day a woman's body is found in the rubble. But Catherine Carr didn't die in the blaze: she'd been stabbed to death - and Harper has to find her killer.The estranged wife of a wealthy industrialist, Catherine had been involved with the Leeds Suffragist Society, demanding votes for women, the same organization for which Harper's wife Annabelle has just become a speaker. Were Catherine's politics the cause of her death? Or is the husband she abandoned behind it? But when her brother escapes from the asylum and steals a shotgun, Harper has to race to find the answers.
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."
