Definitely been quite a week for me, Tom and Annabelle, and Rusted Souls. The first part I’ve known for a little while, but had to wait until it was published.
Booklist, one of the big US trade magazines, put out its review of Rusted Souls. Both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews had given it starred reviews – could it do the treble? Not quite, although it’s everything but. How about this?
“Nickson’s excellent historical police procedural shows what
policing was like before computers, surveillance cameras, and national crime databases, and
while readers may find the pacing slow in the first part of the story, they will soon be utterly
gripped by a riveting, very human, very heartbreaking story with suspense, fast-paced action,
vivid characters, and an unexpected tearjerker of an ending in this last book of Nickson’s
magnificent Tom Harper series.”
Wow, right?
That’s the kind of thing to make a heart sing. But then, on Saturday, the Yorkshire Post published a two-page feature on me, Rusted Souls, the Tom Hraper series, and the upcoming exhibition I’m preparing based on the books, called A Copper’s Eye: Tom Harper’s Leeds, 1890-1920. Quite something.
Don’t forget that Rusted Souls is out next month (but shops are selling it already). If you can afford it, I’d greatly appreciate you buying a hardback or ebook of it. If not, your library will gladly order it it for you.
Thank you – and I’m still over the moon.
Chris Nickson 
Congratulations!! And I’m sure it’s well deserved, given your other books. I guess I’ll have to wait til September to see. Although I hate to see Tom Harper’s story arc go, as I have your others. Any plans yet for another historical series?
Ron
Thank you – only a few weeks until you can read it. I do have the Simon Westow series, now five books strong, and a sixth coming next spring. And there are faint plans for something different. Have to see if they work out.
Yes, I’ve read all the Simon Westow books, but I tend to agree with a comment you made about one of the previous ones – that the writing for his storyline was often related to anger, which I did pick up on after I read that The others seem more related to seeing the characters relating to their time period, although not so much nostalgia as experiencing their challenges almost first-hand. I’ve read some Romance ‘novels’ about the same time periods, and your books make me realize even more that there were two almost entirely separate worlds, where one almost never even saw the other, and the rules and legal system were also separate. It made me wonder whether we also have that even in the modern-day US or Britain, however much we try to believe in equality.
Good luck! The world needs more good story-tellers.
Ron
The Westows definitely have anger as their fuel, and the next one even more so. My tag for the series is Regency Noir. But so many historicals, even historical crime novels, deal with a more rarified world, which wasn’t how most people lived; sometimes I wonder if I have more in common with Dickens than with others. Is there an underclass now? Try reading Stu Hennigan’s Ghost Signs, about delivering food care packages in Leeds in the pandemic, and you’ll see there really is.
Thank you…I still have one or two stories to tell, I hope.