Chris Nickson's Blog, page 7

Coming Soon, Rusted Souls – The Cover

On September 5, and era will end. The 11th and final Tom Harper book will be published.

I thought you might like the first look at the cover (I think it’s a spectacular cover; they’ve done Tom proud) and a blurb of what’s going to happen in the book….

Leeds, 1920. Chief Constable Tom Harper of Leeds City Police has just six weeks left in the role before his well-earned retirement. But even though his distinguished 40-year career is ending, the crime and mayhem on the city’s streets continues.

Council leader Alderman Thompson is being blackmailed. He wants Harper to find the love letters he sent to a young woman called Charlotte Radcliffe and return them discreetly, while elsewhere, masked, armed robbers are targeting jewellery shops in the city, and an organized gang of shoplifters is set to descend on Leeds. As events threaten to spiral out of control, Harper battles to restore justice and order to the streets of Leeds one last time.

A Walk Through Briggate’s History

I know that many, probably most, of you don’t like in Leeds. I do my best to describe my city in different period. But nothing is better that seeing it for yourself. That’s why I’ve been making a few videos in town. Just short ones, to try and offer a taste of some areas.

Why not come take take a walk through time with me on Briggate and Leeds Bridge. And we’ll finish off in a graveyard. Ready? We won’t be long, no need to pack a lunch…

Briggate in its glory.Lower BriggateOn Leeds BridgeA visit to the graveyard.

Publication Day And A Video Bonus

Here we are, finally, and The Dead Will Rise is officially released into the wild. I’m hugely proud it it, I feel it’s the best Simon Westow book so far, and there’s a lot of Jane in there – she really comes into her own in this one, and not before time. I do hope youi’ll buy it, or borrow from a library. But however, I’d love it if you read it, and even more of you left a review somewhere. Those honestly do all help, believe me.

I did promise a video bonus, and I’m not going to let you down. All those little courts and yards feature in my books, whether it’s Richard Nottingham, Simon Westow, or Tom Harper. I know many of your have never experienced them, so come with me and talk a little walk along one. I think you’ll see why I love them.

Guinea Graves And The Victoria Public House

What was a guinea grave? They’re mentioned a time of two in the Tom Harper books. Take a little trip with me to Beckett Street cemetery and I’ll tell you. It’s one of those things that manages to be uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time.

Guinea graves

And here’s a little bonus for you, as I was out doing some filming. Come and see what was once the Victoria public house at the bottom of Roundhay Road, where Tom and Annabelle used to live.

The Victoria, 8 Roundhay Road.

Please remember, The Deal Will Rise is published everywhere next week, and I’d be very, very grateful if you’d order a copy. However, if you’re in the UK, don’t order the hardback from Amazon – Kindle is fine – becasue they’ve screwed up and are currently charing far more than the list price. UK is fine.

Psst, Got A Minute?

Just over two-and-a-half minutes, actually. I want to take you on a walk up Leeds’ oldest street, Kirkgate. I’ve written about it so many times, but there are many of you who don’t know Leeds, so this gives you a chance to really see it.

I might well do more of these short walks. After all, this is my city, and I’m proud of it. I wriote about it, and this is another way to share it, but really, give you a little of its history.

The oldest part of Leeds – it all began here.Some more of Kirkgate, the oldest street here – and once the richest.

Hopefully, that helps bring it alive for you. I hope you enjoy

And just a reminder that my new book The Dead Will Rise, comes out in a couple of weeks. Currently, Amazon UK and Bol both seem to have messed up the pricing and are charging way over the proper price. Hopefully that will be resolved very soon, but please buy it – just from someone else. Ideally an independent, and if you can’t, Speedy Hen has the cheapest price and UK postage (£17.63 as I write this) and Book Depository has free worldwide postage (£19.50 as I write).

Thank you.

The Dead Will Rise – A Teaser

Here we are at the beginning of February, and just five weeks until The Dead Will Rise is published. So…here’s a little bit from the book to whet your appetites. At least, I hope it will. You can pre-order. I’d be very grateful. So far the book has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and raves from Kirkus and Booklist, the big three of the US trade magazines. I’ll glad take that.

Now, go ahead and jump in…

Joseph Clark was one of the new breed of men. He was an engineer, his life wrapped in numbers and measurements. Clark’s world was machines, everything powered by steam and turbines. All of it exact, calculated to the tiniest fraction of an inch.

He’d started just five years earlier with a small wooden workshop on Mabgate. Now the Clark Foundry was solid stone, sprawling along the street, eating up everything with a giant’s appetite. The new buildings were permanent and commanding, shifts of men running all day and all night.

            He stood in the kitchen of Simon’s house on a Monday morning, looking awkward as he worked the brim of his hat through his fingers. Clark was barely thirty, but already his knowledge and patents had made him rich, a man with a fortune that grew larger each day. More wealth than many landowners. Yet money couldn’t disguise his discomfort around people, Simon thought. They weren’t as solid or reliable as numbers.

            ‘Please, take a seat,’ he said, but Clark gave a quick shake of his head. His suit was of the costliest wool, the linen of his shirt and stock starched pure white. But they might as well have come straight off the back of a beggar from the way he wore them. He carried the distracted air of a man who spent his life in another world.

            Clark cleared his throat then began to speak, pausing often as he searched for the words he wanted.

            ‘One of my assistants is named Harmony Jordan. He’s been with me since I began the business. A fortnight ago, his daughter died . . . she was just ten years old. The family lives in Headingley . . . she was buried in St Michael’s churchyard.’ He took a breath and Simon studied the man’s face. He was concentrating, marshalling the precise facts of what he needed to say. ‘A week later, the family went to lay flowers on the grave. It looked as if it had been . . . disturbed. Jordan called the sexton. When the gravediggers opened up the ground, they discovered that his daughter’s body had been removed from the coffin.’

            Simon heard Rosie gasp in horror. He knew what she was thinking: Richard and Amos. On the other side of him, Jane sat silent, staring straight ahead.

            ‘How long ago is it since they found the body was gone?’

            ‘It happened on Friday. But they don’t know when it was taken. Harmony told me on Saturday. That’s why I’m here, Mr Westow. I want to hire you.’

            Simon pursed his lips. ‘I’m a thief-taker. You know that. I find items that have been stolen.’

            ‘I do.’ Clark looked directly into his face. ‘Gwendolyn Jordan was stolen.’

            ‘I understand. But I don’t think I’m the person to help you.’

            The man cocked his head, taken aback. ‘Why not? It’s your work, isn’t it? Surely, taking bodies must be one of the worst things you can imagine.’

            ‘I don’t believe there could be anything worse,’ Simon agreed. He sighed. ‘You have to realize, Mr Clark: all I know about bodysnatching is what I’ve read in the newspapers. I’ve never even heard of it happening before in Leeds. You said Mr Jordan doesn’t know exactly when it happened?’

            ‘No. Just somewhere in the seven days between burial and discovery.’

            Simon chewed the inside of his lip as he thought. ‘The corpse could be anywhere by now. My understanding is that the surgeons and medical schools buy them to dissect for anatomy lessons. There are places in Edinburgh and London. Very likely a few other cities, too.’

            ‘That doesn’t help Harmony and his wife,’ Clark said.

            ‘No, of course not,’ Simon agreed. ‘Believe me, Mr Clark, I know that very well. I’m a parent too. What they’re going through must be unendurable. But do you realize that even if I found the people who did it and they were convicted, they’d only go to prison for a few weeks? Months at the most. The law is very clear: taking a body is only a misdemeanour. It’s not deemed to be property.’

            He saw Clark’s face harden. ‘What? Why, in God’s name?’

‘I wish I knew the answer to that.’

‘They also took the dress her parents had made for the burial.’

            ‘Did they?’ Simon pounced on the words. ‘That could make all the difference.’ A dress was property. If it cost enough, stealing it was a felony. The thieves could be transported, maybe even hanged.

            ‘I imagine they’ll have sold it in Leeds,’ Clark said. ‘I want you to find the men who did it.’

            Simon glanced at Jane. Her face showed nothing, hands pressed flat on the table. He’d wanted a short break from work, but this was a job they could do. No, more than that. This was one he had to do.

            ‘All right.’

            ‘I’ll pay you well beyond the value of the dress, don’t worry about that,’ the man continued. ‘And believe me, I will definitely fund the prosecution of the men behind all this.’

‘That’s your choice.’

‘I also want you to find out what happened to the body. Where it went, who bought it.’

            ‘I can try,’ Simon told him. ‘I can’t guarantee anything on that.’

            ‘Just give me a name,’ Clark said. ‘That’s all I need. I know people all over the country. Give me that and I’ll be able to discover where she is and bring her home.’ His expression softened. ‘Harmony has been with me from the start. He’s important to me.’

            Loyalty, friendship. Maybe there was more to the man than numbers.

As she walked home, Jane kept reading words. Anything at all, everything she saw. She was eager for them. All the signs above shops, the advertisements pasted to walls and fences. Her lips moved silently, forming the words, hearing them in her mind.

            When she was eight years old, after her father raped her, her mother had thrown her on to the streets. Survival became the only thing that mattered. Reading and writing couldn’t help her find food or somewhere to sleep. Now, her life had changed. She was settled. She had her work with Simon, and she’d found contentment living with Mrs Shields, the old woman with a gentle soul who owned the cottage hidden away behind Green Dragon Yard.

            The desire for change had arrived during the autumn. It had been growing through the year. An urge for something more in her life, something new. She’d asked Catherine Shields to teach her to read. As soon as she began to learn, she discovered she was hungry for it all, pushing herself, angry at her failure whenever she stumbled over a phrase or a spelling.

            ‘There’s no rush, child,’ Mrs Shields told her with a soft smile. ‘It’s not a race.’

            Jane drank it down, wanting more and more, to master everything. Rosie showed her numbers, how to add and subtract. One more thing she’d never had the chance to understand. A few times, when she was alone, she’d even scratched on some paper with a nib, trying to make her hand form letters and words.

            Then, just three weeks before, as she strolled along Commercial Street, Jane spotted a bolt of muslin in a seamstress’s window. She’d never paid attention to cloth or patterns. What was the need? Her clothes were old, they were garments for work, for wear and tear and dirt. She had money to afford better but she’d simply never had the urge. It was pointless, it was vanity.

But from nowhere the desire began to nag at her, imagining herself in a dress made from this material. For a week she denied it, telling herself it was frivolous and vain. She had no need of a new frock. Where did she ever go that demanded one? Yet finally she gave in, thrilled by the soft ring of the bell as she entered the shop.

            When the dress was finished and she tried it on, she didn’t recognize the young woman in the mirror. This wasn’t the person she imagined; it was nobody she knew. Long dark hair and a heart-shaped face that led down to the point of her chin.

            She ran her hands over the fabric. It was soft to the touch, rippling under her fingertips. A rich chocolate brown colour, with small designs the shade of ripe raspberries. Modestly cut, high over the bosom, nothing to draw attention. The first new garment she’d ever owned. Jane clutched the package under her arm as she walked up the Head Row.

            As soon as she reached the house, she tucked it away in a chest, unopened, still tied in its brown paper. Suddenly she felt ashamed that she’d bought it. It was too good to wear for work. An indulgence. Money wasted on a pointless whim.

A Little Story

It’s apparently eight years since I wrote this short story. I still think about it regularly, it’s probably my favourite of all the short fiction I’ve written that’s set in Leeds, so no apologies for dreaging it up for you – and I hope you like it, too. Alice Musgrave of Vicar Lane really was the first victim of the plague that visited Leeds in 1645. The rest…is all my invention.

Little Alice Musgrave, lying in her bed,

Little Alice Musgrave with plague in her head,

All the prayers for Alice that all the preachers said,

Little Alice Musgrave, buried and dead.

The children sang it for years afterwards, long after most people had forgotten who Alice had even been. At first I’d chase them away and cuff at their heads, yelling through my tears, shouting at them to shut up. But it didn’t help. They’d keep on singing and every word cut deeper and deeper until my heart until I couldn’t cry out any more.

            Last week I heard it again. A pair of girls, neither of them more than six, were using it as a rhyme for skipping ropes. The good Lord alone knows where they’d learned it. Alice has been dead these twenty years now. Maybe they’d heard their mother idly singing a memory one day.

I was walking along Call Lane with my granddaughter, her hand tight in mine, and the words just made me stop, frozen as winter. I thought my heart might never beat again.

            “What is it, Grandmama?” Emily asked. “Why are you crying like that?”

            I had to draw in my breath slowly before I could answer.

            “It’s nothing, child,” I told her. “Just a memory that flew past.” I tried to make my voice light but it was filled with the weight of all the tears I’d cried. “Come on, let’s get ourselves home. Mama will be wondering where we are.” I clutched her hand tighter and we hurried away.

It wouldn’t vanish. In the darkness, when I lay alone on the sheet and straw, it came back, singing and taunting. It was as if God wasn’t going to give me the peace of forgetting, as if He’d uncovered all the jagged edges of memory again.

            The Roundheads had come again the year before it happened, storming through so loudly that we cowered in the house and prayed they wouldn’t come in and kill us. But Leeds had been buffeted like a feather in the wind, from King to Parliament and back again. The only change was more dead each time.

            But these troops stayed. It felt like a year of mud, when every colour was brown or black and the rains just came and came. The men put up notices for everything – church attendance, how we had to behave, what we could wear. They forbade us from celebrating the birth of our Lord in the old way. That was sinful, they claimed.

            We’d been poor before, desperate for every penny and every bite. But now they took all our joy, too. Snow fell to bring in the new year, only the pikemen with their shining leather boots and glittering weapons allowed on the streets after dark.

            We tried to make ourselves into mice, scurrying and unnoticed lest the cat see us and pounce. Sometimes they’d come and drag one of the menfolk away with their accusations of supporting the king. If he ever came home again it was as someone broken and quiet.

            I feared for Roger, my husband. He’d been a clerk to lawyer Bolton before the attorney had fled. Now the man’s grand house on Briggate was a ruin, a burned-out gap in the street and there was a fine waiting against his name. I kept thinking they’d arrived one day and take Roger off.

            My husband had no work. No one needed a man with his letters. The law was whatever the soldiers said, not something to be argued in a courtroom or written into books. And the cloth trade had dwindled so far that even some of the merchants went hungry. Once it would have been a marvel to see a proud man begging his bread. Now it happened every day.

            We had three girls to feed, Alice, Hannah, and Anne. They often went hungry, but we fed them before we took anything to eat. When Alice woke in the night, moaning with pain, at first I thought it was nothing more than an empty belly.

            “Hush, love,” I whispered. “Just go back to sleep now.”

            But she didn’t stop.

            “It hurts, mama.”

            I knelt by the bed she shared with her sisters, just a sheet over old straw. Her skin was so hot I thought it could burn my fingers and her shift was soaked with her sweat. I bathed her face with cold water and stroked her damp hair, softly singing every lullaby I could remember. And I prayed. The first of so many prayers to rise from Leeds that year, but God blocked His ear to them all.

            By morning she was cold, shaking and shivering with it. Nothing I did could help. I sent Roger to bring the wise woman who lived on Kirkgate. She looked, poking my beautiful little girl with her fingers so that she gave a scream like Christ’s agony.

            Outside, where a bitter wind came out of the west, the woman put her arms on my shoulders and looked at me with wise, ancient eyes.

            “She has the pestilence,” she said softly.

            I opened my mouth. I wanted to say no, to shout, to cry, but nothing came. All I could think was why was He judging her like this? What had she done? She was only eleven, she had no sins to her name.

            “I’ll bring something in a little while,” the woman continued. “It’ll help her rest and ease the pain a little.” Then she was gone and I was out there, alone as the cold whipped around me.

            The word passed quickly, as if the wind had carried it around the town. The soldiers’ doctor arrived in his neat, clean uniform to examine her then shake his head. A pair of troopers were placed outside our door to keep folk away. We were kept inside. Roger tried to amuse Hannah and Anne, to distract them, while I tended to Alice. The wise woman delivered her little bottle, something clear and sweet-smelling inside, and it worked. My beautiful girl slept. Little Alice Musgrave with plague in her head. It was on her body, the lumps growing so quickly under her arms and between her legs, the stink growing stronger with every hour, as if death was consuming her inch by inch.

            The army left food outside our door, kindling and blankets. For the first time in a year we could have lived like human beings if we’d wanted. But who could have an appetite with this? I tried to keep Alice warm when the cold racked her, hugging her close to give her my heat. Weariness took me deep into my bones, but I couldn’t sleep. I only had hours left with my daughter and I couldn’t let any moment of them slip away.

            They held a service in St. John’s to pray for her, I heard later. For her soul and her salvation. What good was that when the Lord has turned away, I wanted to shout? But I never said a word.

            After a day she’d moved beyond speech, only able to make noise like a baby, each one full of pain and fright. Her swellings turned black, the change coming in the blink of an eye. I kept hold of her hand, letting her know that we all loved her. All I wanted now was for her suffering to end.

            Alice lasted until the shank of the day. She wasn’t fighting, not even aware, just waiting. Then she gulped in a breath and it was over. I sat, still clutching her fingers and felt life leave her.

They took her body away quickly, the first to go into a plague pit. No coffin, no more than a winding sheet and a covering of quicklime. They wouldn’t let us go to watch her being placed in the earth. All we were allowed were the four walls of our room and a heaven full of sorrow in our hearts.

            Two mornings later it was Roger who began to sweat and by dinner Hannah was ill. I tended to them as best I could, moving like a ghost from one to the other as Anne became a silent, frightened child in the corner, too scared to move in case death sprang for her.

            I hadn’t had time to grieve for my Alice when the others fell ill. All I could do was exist, snatch rest when I could, lying next to a body with the stench of decay, waking to another scream or a moan.

            At least God took them to Himself quickly, less than a day each. And then it was just Anne and I, waiting and wondering how long before it came for us, too.

            But it never did. After a week I walked outside. People talked and went about their business, trying to pretend nothing had happened, as if Alice and Roger and Hannah hadn’t died. Yet I could see the terror in their eyes and the way they shunned me, as if I carried death like a shadow around me. Then I heard the rhyme for the first time, a group of children playing down the road, throwing a ball from one to the other. Little Alice Musgrave, lying in her bed. I ran towards them screaming and saw them scatter in surprise. My arm caught one boy and I started to hit him over and over as the tears tumbled down my cheeks.

            Spring came, sunny, bright and fertile to mock us all. I knew what it meant. With the warm weather the plague would remain with us all. While others held their Bibles close, I prayed it would take me and Anne, that it would lift the weight in our hearts. Each week there’d be fewer faces I knew on the streets, but death kept denying me.

The soldiers left in the end. I’d lost track of how long they stayed; sometimes it seemed as if they’d always been there. Now we have a king again in London, or so they say. It makes little difference to our life in Leeds.

            The houses that were destroyed have been rebuilt. Maybe they’re even grander than they were before, I can’t remember. My Anne is married with a little girl of her own. She had one before but her Alice died when she was no more than a month old. I’d told her it was an ill-starred name, but she wouldn’t listen to me.

            I play with Emily, take her to the market and down to the river where men sell the fish they catch. I live with them, accompany them to church on a Sunday, but all I pray for now is to forget.

A nudge that just a couple of months until the fifth Simon Westow novel, The Dead Will Rise, is published. You might like that, too.

Happy Holidays

It’s coming, arriving Sunday. I’m not one to celebrate Christmas, although I’m looking forward to reading the new Maggie O’Farrell book I’ve been given – I loved Hamnet – and I know I’ll enjoy the peace and quiet. No venturing into Leeds for the sales or any of that madness. I have what I need, thank you.

I’d like to thank you all for sticking with me and hopefully enjoying the books. Honestly, it means everything. I love it when I hear from people to say they’ve read this or that or a book has made them really feel Leeds. That’s success.

There’s more to come in 2023, a Simon Westow in March and the final Tom Harper in the autumn. Already had the first US review for the Westow, The Dead Will Rise, and it’s a starred review from Publishers Weekly, one of the important trade magazines.

I wish you all happy holidays, whatever you celebrate or don’t celebrate, and a happy and healthy 2023. It has to be better than the last few years, doesn’t it?

And thank you again.

The Dead Will Rise – First Review

I hadn’t intended to post anything this week, but…

The first review for The Dead Will Rise is set to appear. The book isn’t out until March, but the US trade magazines get an early start, and Publishers Weekly is one of the biggest.

Anyway, rocked on my heels to get it so soon, but more to have a starred review. The fourth star in a row for Simon Westow, Jane and Rosie. Called “excellent fifth whodunit in the series. “Nickson keeps the story line intriguing despite the focus on a crime other than murder as he further develops his leads,” the reviwer says, calling the book a “gritty and surprise-filled mystery.”

Wow. Just wow. That’s possibly the best Christmas present I could receive.

Oh – I’ve almost finished the draft on the next one, too, tentative titled The Scream Of Sins.

Coming In 2023

We’re close to the end of 2022, hard to believe. That means it’s time to take a peek into what the next 12 months promises in books. Well, my books. Before I do, though, I’d like to recommend the best thing I’ve read this year. It’s Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver. A modern Appalachian retelling on David Copperfield, it’s both harrowing and redemptive and very beautifully written. Tell them I sent you (and it’s not too late to catch up with Thomas M Atkinson’s Tiki Man, in my estimation the best thing to appear in 2021).

So…

March is set to bring the fifth Simon Westow book, The Dead Will Rise. It’s a series that definitely grows dark; by now it’s living up to the Regency Noir tag I gave it.

What’s it about? Here’s the blurb.

Leeds. April, 1824.  Wealthy engineer Joseph Clark employs thief-taker Simon Westow to find the men who stole the buried corpse of Catherine Jordan, his employee’s daughter.

Simon is stunned and horrified to realize there’s a gang of bodysnatchers in Leeds. He needs to discover who bought Catherine’s body and where it is now. As he hunts for answers, he learns that a number of corpses have vanished from graveyards in the town. Can Simon and his assistant Jane bring the brutal, violent Resurrection men who are selling the dead to medical schools to justice and give some peace to the bereft families?

In case you’re wondering, there really were bodysnatchers in Leeds. But that’s a tale for another time.

Then, next autumn, there’s the big one: Rusted Souls, the eleventh and final Tom Harper. It takes place in 1920, in the aftermath of the Great War and the Spanish flu. It’s 30 years since the series began with Gods of Gold and now Tom has become Chief Constable.

This book mean a lot to me. I’ve spent three decades with the Harpers. They’re family to me, and saying goodbye was hard. I’ve written in the region of 800,000 words about them. Being able to round it properly was important to me, and I feel I’ve done them justice. But time will tell. They’re crime novels, a saga of a family, but also an exploration of a changing Leeds, I think. I’m proud to have written these. No cover design yet

But that’s all for next year. Meanwhile, I wish you and your happy holidays and a peaceful, healthy New Year – and thank you for reading. And remeber – books make great gifts, for yourself as well as others.