Author: chrisnickson2

Six Years (For My Mother)

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Six years ago today, my mother died. As these things go, it was perhaps as good a death as it could be: instant (a fatal heart attack), probably painless, I’m told, and at home. She made it to 88 with her senses intact and her mind still sharp.

She was one of the reasons I moved back to England. Not the main one, I admit guiltily, but still there. We talked every morning on the phone and I saw her regularly.

I’ve often written about my father, but not about my mother, and I’m not sure why. Maybe because I’m more like my father than I care to admit, and see a mirror of him in myself. But during my teenage years, when my dad and I locked horns on a very regular basis, it was my mother who stood between us as the peacemaker. What I didn’t understand then was how much the fighting tore her apart. Both of them had been married before, during the war, and this was their second marriage. It speaks volumes that it lasted almost 50 years; that would have been longer if my father hadn’t died in January 2001, 48 years and two months after they were wed.

But she was always there when I needed her. When I was about 15, and my first real girlfriend broke up with me, she was the one who gave me money for a pack of cigarettes – Gold Leaf, none of the cheap rubbish – and told me to buy them, to calm myself, although she never smoked herself.

When I moved to America, and the only real contact was airmail letters, with phone calls on birthdays and Christmas, she – both of them – gave their blessing to me going, and never said a word more about it, then or later.

Every time I came back to visit, she was the one who cooked my favourite foods. And she looked after my father. After his heart attack, he was too scared to really venture out. She was the one who ran all the errands and did the shopping, even though an arthritic knee made movement difficult for her.

I visited them in November 2000, just a couple of weeks before my father’s last stroke. He did the following January in hospital, and she was the one who told me not to fly back for his funeral. He wasn’t there any more, she said, it was just bones and flesh that would go up in flames.

A few months later, she came to Seattle and stayed for a month. She couldn’t get around well enough for sightseeing, but I believe she loved simply getting away from the four walls that had held her close for so long, and getting to know her grandson. If her knee had been better, I’m certain she’d have travelled more.

Her own father was quite the patriarch; she’d been raised to defer, not argue. But that didn’t stop her being a very strong woman, in her own way – in ways I didn’t fully comprehend until later. She lived long enough to see me published, but not long enough to see any of my novels in print. She would, I believe, have enjoyed that and felt proud.

She set me a good example, and all I can do is try to make her proud. I love her still, and I miss her. In every sense of the word, she was a good woman.

You Don’t Know Tom Harper, Do you?

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But you will. Well, I hope you will, once Gods of Gold is published (end of August in the UK). Anyone coming in after Richard Nottingham has big shoes to fill. But almost 160 years after Richard, perhaps Inspector Tom Harper is the man to do it.

Although he’s the central character in the new series, he wasn’t the first one to leap out at me fully-formed. That was his fiancée, Annabelle Atkinson, a widow of about 30 who runs the Victoria pub at the bottom of Roundhay Road in Leeds. She’d been in a short story I wrote, Annabelle Atkinson and Mr Grimshaw and she began to haunt me. But she wasn’t yet the Annabelle of the book. There was still a way to go.

And she had more to tell me.

It clicked into place when I realised she ran the Victoria. It’s a pub that really existed until a few years ago, and the building is still standing. The woman who really ran it was a distant relative – at least around 1920. My father, who lived in Hunslet, would spend his summers there, as it had a big garden, and a piano where he could practice to his heart’s content. She also owned a few bakeries in the area and did a little moneylending; a consummate businesswoman, and a strong, independent woman who’d started out as a servant in the pub, married the owner for love, then run the business herself after she died.

I had her. That was a beginning.

After that, I happened to read about the Leeds Gas Strike of 1890. It was a blatant attempt by the Gas Committee of Leeds Council to save money by basically firing workers then hiring fewer of them back at a lower wage and under terms that largely deprived them of their rights, a move that resonates so much with what’s happening everywhere today.

The difference is that the strikers won. The Gas Committee had to capitulate. Hard to imagine that happening these days. Who wouldn’t want to write about a situation like that?

And that was where Tom Harper walked in. He had to be somewhat political, and on the left end of the spectrum. So he’d be a working class lad. And he needed a detective. From there, he simply came together. He’d grown up in the Leylands, just north of the town centre, before it became a Jewish area. He’d lived in a back-to-back house, left school when he was nine to work rolling barrels at Brunswick Brewery. But he wanted to be a policeman. He’d educated himself by borrowing books from the public library and finally, when he was 19, he’d joined Leeds Police. He’d spent six years on the beat, covering the courts and yards between Briggate and Lands Lane. His parents had died, his sisters were happily married, and he lived in lodgings just off Chapeltown Road.

And there was Tom. Of course, he couldn’t do everything alone, but there’s more to come in the book, of course. And he still had to meet Annabelle and the two of them had to become close…you’ll have to read Gods of Gold to discover all that, though.

The Genesis of Richard Nottingham

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As most of you must know by now, the Richard Nottingham series is taking a break. However, Richard certainly isn’t dead and there will be a time when he’ll be ready to whisper some stories in my ear again.

I’ve been thinking about him a little over the last few days, and the way he first came into my life.

Well, perhaps the best way to begin is to say that Richard Nottingham was a real person. At least, a Richard Nottingham was. He was Constable of Leeds from 1717-1737, taking over the post from William Nottingham, who might well have been his father. It was, really, purely ceremonial, and there seem to be very few mentions of him in the records. Quite certainly, he wouldn’t have actively investigated crimes. That would have been left for the night watch, most of whom also served as the Town Waits, or musicians, performing for dances and big occasions. Probably the closest he ever came to a real crime was watching a hanging on Chapeltown Moor.

So yes, I took a few liberties with the truth. No apologies for that. After all, the truth can’t compare with a good tale.

But the first time I wrote about Richard, he wasn’t even the main character in the story. 10 years ago, when I was still living in Seattle, I wrote a novel called The Cloth Searcher. That was an honorary title given to a Leeds merchant – a new one each year – who was responsible for ensuring that the cloth sold and exported in Leeds was of a sufficiently high standard. Given that the place traded on its reputation, quality was important.

In the book, Tom Williamson, a merchant (whom you may recognise from the series) was the Cloth Searcher, and the central character. His wife, Hannah, was an important character, while Richard was relegated to secondary status. And before anyone asks, no, I don’t still have a copy of it.

At that time I was winding down on writing quickie unauthorised biographies (the most embarrassing ones aren’t under my own name), and asked my agent, who only represented non-fiction, if she knew any agent who might be interested. She passed on the name of a British agent who works with several big-name crime writers. To cut a long story short, she read it, and we met when I visited the UK.

She liked my writing, but not the story. Go away and do me something different was the message.

It made sense to have a lawman at the centre of it. Richard Nottingham was fleshed-out, with a wife and two daughters. He also had a past that saw him start off grand, the son of a merchant, then among the poor once his father threw him and his mother art. He’d seen life from both sides, a man who understood and had experience and compassion. He also acquired a deputy, John Sedgwick.

As most detectives in fiction are loners, I wanted Richard to have a family he dearly loved (an idea inspired by Candace Robb’s Owen Archer novels). Not only was it truer to life, it opened up another side to him, and I wanted the people to be as important as the mysteries.

And there was one other rule: just like life, anyone can die. It didn’t matter if they were a central or a minor character, they were all mortal.

I was about ready to let Richard tell his tale.

I did just that, after I moved back to England in 2005, and presented her with an early version of The Broken Token. Two days after receiving it, she signed me to the agency roster and set me to work with their in-house editor.

For a few months we worked together, then presented the head of the agency with the book. Two days later she emailed and said they were cutting ties with me. I assume she didn’t like the book. I don’t really know as she never said.

I did approach other agents, but received no encouragement, and the book lay fallow for quite a while until I was in the library and chanced across a novel published by Crème de la Crime. It was historical crime, set in the 18th century, and the publisher was close to me.

It was worth a shot. I sent off the first 10,000 words and a synopsis. And waited. Then there was an email. The publisher wanted to see the rest. Wait again (cue plenty of nail-biting) until there was another email saying they wanted to publish the book.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. But now you know the genesis of Richard Nottingham.

Walking Into Reality

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A week or so ago, I just put the final words to the draft of a new novel. A murder mystery; after all, that’s what I do, kill people for a living. When I’d finished, after living deep in the book and with these people for a few months, I decided to take a walk to clear my head.

There’s a place, a house that I used to pass every day on my way to school. I just fancied another look at it and a walk in the woods there. It’s no more than 20 minutes’ walk from where I live now. Across the fields, down the ginnel that runs alongside my old school, then along a road that’s still unpaved 40 years on…and I was pretty much there.

Except I wasn’t.

At the top of the hill everyone knows as Little Switzerland, the road was blocked by police tape and a Police Community Support Worker keeping traffic out. All he’d tell me was that there had been an ‘incident.’

Okay.

There are other ways into the woods, and I was curious now. I still know this area well. The woods cover one side of the valley, with paths on different levels. I took the high path, and even saw someone walking a dog. But the trees were bare, and at the bottom of the hill I could see five police cars. Whatever had happened, it was something big. But I wasn’t going to go closer. Not my affair. It was directly across the street from where I grew up, and where my mother lived until her death. If she’d still been alive, this would have been the best gossip in years.

I did get to take a look at the outside of the house I’d come to see – it was near the top of the hill – then walked home. A question on Twitter provided the answer to what had happened. Two kids on their way to school – my old school – had found a body.

That was bad enough. Horrible for the family of whoever was dead, and traumatic for the kids. But as the story developed, it got worse. He’d been murdered, shot. Supposedly kidnapped and killed; two people are in custody and police are seeking a third.

The reasons will come out in time. But for now, for me at least (and I know this is a selfish view, given the tragedy), it can’t help but be a little surreal. Leaving murder on the page to walk into a crime scene…

Roundhay Park And Me

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On the first lovely day of the year, with the promise of spring so strong and the breeze gently fresh rather than chilling, what else is a man to do but go for a walk? And for me, that means Roundhay Park in Leeds. It’s local, and I have a history with those 700 acres. A greatly interrupted one, but it’s there, nonetheless.

It was where we ran cross country at school, around the Upper Lake, off through the woods and gorge and back. On summer Sundays I’d walk over there, dressed in what I thought was cool (and undoubtedly wasn’t) trying to meet girls. There were boats for hire on the small lake, the café was little more than a shack, and the Mansion was a posh restaurant.

I left the city before the park became a venue for concerts. The only thing that happened in the area then was cricket in the summer – as it still does.

Walking today, there are things that have changed, but so much more that’s the same. Where I fished for sticklebacks might be fenced off, but people still walk their dogs and stroll. Families stick together, children in strollers or running, maybe riding their bikes with training wheels. Girls are out in their twos or fours, there are boys playing football or tossing a ball, shirts off to impress. Old people just taking the air.

The park is still exactly what John Barran hoped when he took a chance and purchased it for the people of Leeds in 1872. It’s still very much the people’s park, a wonderfully democratic space.

But more than that, like many parks, it’s essentially an unchanging space. Sitting at the top of Hill 60 and looking down, there’s very little that would have been different a century or more ago. The fashions have changed, but so much else is the same. I almost felt that if I looked close enough I’d be able to see a younger men, sitting there and looking hopeful.

The Ways of Darkness

By now, many of you know that Gods of Gold, my mystery set in Victorian Leeds, comes out in August. It is – I hope – the first in a series, and I’m working on the second. Because I’m in one of those devil-may-care moods, I thought you might enjoy the start of the sequel, The Ways of Darkness. Actually, I thought it might help build anticipation for the first book. I’m evil that way….

DECEMBER 1890

CHAPTER ONE

“Have you heard a word I said, Tom Harper?”

“Of course I have.” He stirred and stretched in the chair. “You were talking about visiting your sister.”

Annabelle’s face softened.

“It’ll only be for an hour. We can go in the afternoon, after we’ve eaten.”

“Of course,” he told her with a smile. He was content, finally at home and warm for the first time since morning.

He’d spent the day chasing around Leeds on the trail of a burglar, no closer to catching him than he’d been a month before. He’d gone from Burley to Hunslet, and never a sniff of the man. Still, better that than being in uniform; half of the constables had been on patrol in the outdoor market, cut by the December wind as they tried to nab the pickpockets and sneak thieves. It was still blowing out there, howling and rattling the window frames. At least as a police inspector with he could take Hackney cabs and omnibuses and dodge the weather for a while.

But tomorrow he was off duty, the first Christmas in five years that he hadn’t worked. Christmas 1890, the first together with his wife. He turned his head to look at her and the wedding ring that sparkled in the light. Five months married. Annabelle Harper. The words still made him smile.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Nothing.”

He often glanced at her when she was busy with something else, working in the kitchen or at her desk, going through the figures for her businesses. Sometimes he could scarcely believe she’d married him. Annabelle had grown up in the slums of the Bank, another daughter in a poor Irish family. She’d started work here in the Victoria and eventually married the landlord. Six years later, after he died, everyone advised her to sell. But she’d held on and kept the place, trusting her instincts. She’d built it into a healthy business, then seen a chance and opened bakeries in Sheepscar and Meanwood that were doing well. Annabelle Harper was a rich woman. Not that anyone round here called her Harper. To them she’d always be Mrs. Atkinson, the name she’d carried for so long.

And she was his.

“You look all in,” she told him.

Harper gave a happy sigh. Where they lived, the rooms over the public house, felt perfectly comfortable, curtains drawn against the winter night, the fire in the hearth and the soft hiss of the gas lights. He didn’t even want to move.

“I’m cosy,” he said. “Come and give me a cuddle.”

“A cuddle? You’re lucky I put your supper on the table.”

She stuck out her tongue, her gown swishing as she came and settled in his arms. He could hear the voices in the bar downstairs. Laughter and a snatch of song from the music halls.

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll send them on their way early tonight. They all have homes to go to. Then we’ll have some peace and quiet.”

But only for a few hours. She’d be up before dawn, the way she always was, working next to the servants, stuffing the goose that was waiting in the kitchen, baking the bread and preparing the Christmas dinner. Dan the barman and the girls who worked for her would join them at the table. They’d light candles on the tree, sing, laugh, exchange gifts and drink their way through the barrel of beer she’d set aside.

After their bellies were full the two of them would walk over to visit her sister, taking presents for Annabelle’s nieces and nephews. For one day, at least, he could forget all the crime in Leeds. Billy Reed, his sergeant, was would cover the holiday. Then Harper would be return on Boxing Day, back to pursue the damned burglar.

Annabelle stirred.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“What?”

He gazed at her. He hadn’t heard a thing. Six years before, while he was still a constable, he’d taken a blow on the ear that left him partially deaf. The best the doctor had promised was that his hearing might return in time. But in the last few months, since autumn began, it had grown a little worse. Sometimes he missed entire sentences, not just words. His ear simply shut off for a few seconds. He’d never told anyone, scared that it would go on his record, that someone would tell.

“On the stairs.”

He listened. Still nothing. Then someone was knocking on the door. Before he could even move, she rose swiftly to answer it.

“It’s for you.” Her voice was dark.

He’d seen the constable down at Millgarth station. One of the new intake, uniform carefully pressed, the cap pulled down smartly on his head and his face eager for excitement. Had he ever looked as young as that?

“I’m off duty-” he began.

“I know, sir.” The man blushed. “But Superintendent Kendall told me to come and fetch you. There’s been a murder.”

Harper turned helplessly to Annabelle.

“You go, Tom.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Just come home as soon as you can.”

CHAPTER TWO

The cold clawed his breath away. Stars shone brilliantly in a clear sky. He huddled deeper into his overcoat and pulled the muffler tight around his neck.

“What’s your name?” Harper asked as they started down the road.

“Stone, sir. Constable Stone. Started three month back.”

“And where are we going, Mr. Stone?”

“The Leylands, sir.”

Harper frowned.

“Whereabouts?”

“Trafalgar Street.”

He knew it well, no more than a stone’s throw from where he’d grown up on Noble Street. All of it poverty scented by the stink of malt and hops from the Brunswick Brewery up the road. Back-to-backs as far as the eye could see. A place where the pawnbrokers did roaring business each Monday as housewives took anything valuable for the cash to last until Friday payday.

In the last few years the area had filled with Jewish immigrants, almost every house packed with them, from Russia and Hungary and countries whose names he didn’t know, while the English moved out and scattered across the city. Yiddish had become the language of the Leylands. Only the smell of the brewery and the lack of money remained the same.

“Step out,” he told the constable. “We’ll freeze to the bloody spot if we stand still.”

Harper led the way, through the memory of the streets where he used to run as a boy. The gas lamps threw little circles of light but he didn’t need them; he could have found his way in pitch blackness. There streets were empty, curtains closed tight. People would be huddled together in their beds, trying to keep warm.

As they turned the corner into Trafalgar Street he caught the murmur of voices. Suddenly lights burned in the houses and figures gathered on their doorsteps. Harper raised his eyes questioningly at Stone.

“The outhouses, sir. About halfway down.”

The cobbles were icy; Harper’s boots slipped as he walked. Conversation ended as they passed, mean and women looking at them what sad, suspicious eyes. They were goys. Worse, they were authority.

They passed two blocks of four houses before Stone turned and moved between a pair of coppers, their faces ruddy and chilled, keeping back a small press of people. Someone had placed a sheet over the body. Harper knelt and pulled it back for a moment. A young man, strangely serene in death. Straggly dark hair, a white shirt without a collar and a dark suit. The inspector ran has hands over the clothes, feeling the blood crusted where the man had been stabbed. Slowly, he counted the wounds. Four of them. All on his chest. The corpse had been carefully arranged. The body was straight, the arms at ninety degrees to make the shape of a cross.

Harper stood again and noticed Billy Reed talking to one of the uniforms and scribbling in his notebook. The sergeant nodded as he saw him.

“Do we know who he was?”

“Not yet.” Reed rubbed his hands together and blew on them. “Best as I can make out, that one found him an hour ago. But I don’t speak the lingo.” He nodded at a middle-aged man in a dark coat, a black hat that was too large almost covering his eyes. “He started shouting and the beat bobby came along. They called me out.” He shrugged. “I told the super I could take care of it but he wanted you.” His voice was a mixture of apology and resentment.

“It doesn’t matter.”

It did, of course. He didn’t want to be out here in the bitter night with a corpse. He wanted to be at home with his wife, in bed and feeling the warmth of her skin. But Kendall had given his orders.

The man who’d found the body stood apart from the others, head bowed, muttering to himself. He scarcely glanced up as Harper approached, lips moving in undertone of words that was just a whisper.

“Do you know who that man was?” he asked.

“Er iz toyt.” He’s dead.

“English?” the Inspector asked hopefully, but the man just shook his head. He kept his gaze on the ground, too fearful to look directly at a policeman.

“Velz is dayn nomen?” The Yiddish made the man’s head jerk up. What’s your name?

“Israel Liebermann, mayn ir,” the man replied nervously. Sir. Growing up here it had been impossible not to absorb a little of the language. It floated in the shops and all around the boys that played in the road.

“Ikh bin Inspector Harper.”

A hand tapped him on the shoulder and he turned quickly to see a pair of dark eyes staring at him.

“What?” He had the sense that the man had spoken; for that moment he hadn’t heard a word. He swallowed and the world came back into both ears

“I said it was a good try, Inspector Harper. But your accent needs work.” The voice was warm, filled with kindness. He extended his hand and Harper took it.

“I’m Rabbi Feldman.”

The man was dressed for the weather in a heavy overcoat that extended almost to his feet, thick boots, leather gloves and a hat pulled down to his ears. A wiry grey beard flowed down to his chest.

A gust of wind blew hard. Harper shivered, feeling the chill deep in his marrow.

“If you think this is cold, you never had a winter in Odessa.” The rabbi grinned then his face grew serious. “Can I be help at all?”

“Someone’s been murdered. This gentleman found him. But we don’t know who the dead man was.”

Feldman nodded then began a conversation in Yiddish with Liebermann. A pause, another question and a long answer.

He’d heard of the rabbi. Everyone had. In the Leylands he was almost a hero. He was one of them; his family had taken the long march west when the pogroms began. He understood their sorrows and their dreams. In his sixties now, walking with the help of a silver-topped stick, he’d been head of the Belgrave Street Synagogue for over ten years. He taught in the Hebrew school on Gower Street and met with councillors from the Town Hall. He was man of mitzvahs, good deeds. Portly and gentle, with quiet dignity, he was someone that everybody respected.

“He says he needed the outhouse just before ten – he’d looked at his watch in the house so he knew what time it was. He put on his coat and came down.” Feldman smiled. “You understand, it’s cold in these places. You try to finish as soon as possible. When he was done he noticed the shape and went to look. That’s when he began to yell.”

“Thank you,” Harper said, although it was no more than they already knew.

“Murder is a terrible business, Inspector.” The man hesitated. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“We still don’t know the name of the dead man.”

“May I?” Feldman gestured at the corpse. Harper nodded and one of the constables drew back the sheet again.

“Mine Got.” He drew in his breath sharply.

“Do you know him?”

It was a few seconds before the rabbi answered, staring intently at the face. Slowly he took off the hat and tugged a hand through his ragged white hair.

“Yes, Inspector,” he said, and there was all the sadness of the world in his voice. “I know him. I know him very well. I gave him his bris and his bar mitzvah. He’s my sister’s son.”

His nephew. God, he thought, what a way to find out.

“I’m sorry, sir. Truly.”

The man’s shoulders slumped.

“Seventeen.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Just a boychik. He was going to be the one.” Feldman tapped a finger against the side of his head. “He had the smarts, Inspector. His father, he was already training him to run the business.”

“What was his name, sir? I need to know.”

“Abraham. Abraham Levy.” The rabbi rummaged in a trouser pocket, brought out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Why?” he asked quietly. “Why would someone kill anyone who was so young?”

Harper didn’t have the answer. Why was anyone murdered?

“Where did he live?”

“On Nile Street.” Feldman straightened suddenly. “My sister. I have to tell her.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No,” the man answered, his voice firm. “No, Inspector, please. It’s better from me. I’ll go and see them. Tomorrow you can ask your questions. Tonight’s for grieving. You come in the morning.”

“Of course,” he agreed.

He waited, but the rabbi didn’t move, staring at something no one else could see.

“You know, when I was young, they murdered Jews for fun,” he said. “For sport. So we ran, because running was the only way to stay alive. Then, when we came here, we wondered if we’d run far enough or fast enough, if it would be the same again. We had children and we built lives. But always, we keep our eyes open and a bag close by.” He turned his eyes on Harper, the tears shining on his cheeks. “Is this the way it is now? Do we have to run again?”

“No, sir. That’s something you’ll never have to do again.”

Of course there were those who resented the Jews. He’d heard them from time to time, talking in the pubs after a few pints loosened their tongues. But it had never been more than words.

He watched Feldman shuffle away, exchanging a few solemn words here and there, then stopping to talk to a young woman and place his hand on her shoulder as she put her hands over her face.

“Did you hear all that?” he asked. Reed nodded and lit a cigarette, smoke curling into the air.

“It’s the position he was left in that worries me.”

Harper agreed. A mockery of the crucifixion, out on the cobbles.

“And the time. Christmas Eve.”

“What do you think?” the sergeant asked.

“I don’t know yet, Billy.”

“I’ll tell you something. Look around him. There’s hardly any blood. He wasn’t killed here.”

Harper nodded; he’d noticed. What it all meant was anyone’s guess.

“Talk to everyone in the houses round here and find out if they saw anything. Start the bobbies on that. One or two of them must speak Yiddish. And have a word with that girl over there.” He pointed at her, surrounded now by others trying to give some comfort. “She knew Abraham Levy.”

“Do you think she’ll speak English?”

The Inspector glanced over at her. No more than sixteen. Probably born in Leeds. The place where her parents had lived would be no more than horror stories to her.

“I’m sure she does.”

“What about the body?” Reed wondered. “Do you want me to send it over to Hunslet for Dr. King?”

“No,” Harper said slowly. The police surgeon wouldn’t be there for the next two days. There was little he could tell them that they couldn’t see for themselves. He knew the Jewish way, burial before the next sunset. He could give them that, if nothing else. “They’ll have an undertaker along soon. And Billy…”

“What?”

“Once they’ve all gone, take a look through his pockets. And have them start searching for the knife that killed him. It might be around somewhere. I’m going to Millgarth and write up the report.”

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A Brief History of Crime

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Crime has been around almost as long as there have been human beings on the planet. Maybe longer, if those dinosaurs were stealing from each other. Most early empires had judges, so there was crime. In the Old Testament, Cain slew Abel, and the 10 Commandments include no killing or stealing. And those are the ones I’ll focus on here.

It’s nothing new. And it doesn’t really change. We’re a venal lot, aren’t we?

The nature of crime might change with technology – computer fraud and what have you – but at its heart it’s not different from the first Neanderthal who hit another over the head with a rock to take his share of meat.

Discover plants and you can add in poison. Tip someone into a river and they either learn to swim very quickly or drown. He just slipped. It was an accident!

Of course, along with crime came detection. Observation first. Brainpower and putting two and two together. Then the sophistication of seeing a knife wound and a bloody knife someone carried in a sheath. Matching blade to cut. The scent of a poison (hmm, that smells like almonds).

Punishments were harsh. Not just an eyes for an eye. In Egypt you could be buried out in the desert. In Rome you could be throw off a high rock or sealed in a bag with vicious animals and dropped in the river. Of course, if you could afford a good lawyer and enough witnesses to testify to your character and tear your opponent’s apart, you could walk free. Nice to see some things don’t change. Money and influence helped. Of course.

Not much changed in the Middle Ages. Plenty of betrayals, of course, but that’s not really crime, is it? Just faithlessness and looking to back a winner. But always the usual murders and thefts, not to mention the droit de siegneur of landlords and the roll over everything attitude of the rich.

After a short breath of hope during the godly society of the Puritans – when crime statistics probably didn’t fall at all (just think of those Salem witch accusations, for instance) – it was back to the same old same old, and stayed that way until pre-Victorian times.

In an era of rampant capitalism and industrialisation, where the gulf between rich and poor grew, those without money stole to feed their families. The reaction? Greatly increase the number of capital crimes to over 200. Transport offenders, first to America and after they kicked out the British, Australia. Those weren’t the laws of justice, but of fear (and there’s a return to it today, but that’s another story).

The detection of crime, though, hadn’t moved on too much, apart from Sherlock Holmes, who solved everything. Unfortunately, he was fictional. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century and the arrival of Sir Bernard Spilsbury that forensic science began to take shape, and using fingerprints became accepted.

Yet, at the core, crime doesn’t change. It’s something that’s a part of humanity. It always will be. But crime through the ages and its solution fascinate us. Try Peter Doherty for Ancient Egypt, Lindsay Davis and Stephen Saylor for Rome. The Middles Ages? Candace Robb, Ellis Peters and Michael Jecks will tell you all you need to know. Tudors? C.J Sansome. Georgian era? Well, there’s a series of books about the Constable of Leeds by a guy called Chris Nickson. Victorian? Wilkie Collins, dickens, Conan Doyle, Anne Perry. And that Nickson chap has one set in 1890 coming out later this year. 20th century? Everyone in the world, it seems

An Author On Your Radio

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This coming Tuesday, February 18, I’ll be on BBC Radio Leeds between 2-3 pm UK time.

Thanks to the recommendation of my friend Mick McCann, I’ll be a guest on the One to One programme with Nick Ahad, rabbiting on about writing novels and music journalism (I think), and playing a few favourite and odd tracks, everything from the Mekons to the Walkabouts, Thomas Tallis to Thelonious Monk.

I believe you can listen online from anywhere in the world. Just follow this link. It should also be available on BBC iPlayer for seven days afterwards. And do let me know if I make a complete arse of myself. Again.

Time, Place And the Quote Of Great Joy

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Back at the start of 1986, a decade after moving to America, I ended up in Seattle. Once I had the chance to find my feet, the city felt like home. For those who don’t know it, it’s a place that lives up to the hype in its beauty, scenery and people. I was happy there. But there was that lingering feeling of being a man without a country, not quite American, not quite English.

Four months ago I finally came back to Leeds. It only took 37 years for me to find my way home. And home is a real, deep feeling. I do feel like someone who’s found his true place in the world. Considering that most of my novels have been set here, it’s taken me a while to realise that this is where I belong. I feel this city deep in my bones, the way I can feel no other. I understand it, and in an odd way I feel that it understands me.

I’ve been writing about Leeds quite a bit lately. Not just the monthly history blog (which has now migrated to the Leeds Big Bookend website), but my books. August sees the publication of Gods of Gold, the first in a new series set in the Leeds of 1890. I’ve completed another one set in Leeds, Dark Briggate Blues, a surprisingly noir novel – well, that aspect surprised me, anyway – in 1954 Leeds, and I’m at work on the second Victorian novel.

This is the place that moves me, that makes my heart beat a little fast.

And yet. And yet…I can’t fully say goodbye to Seattle. It’s a place with plenty of memories, the home of my son, and where I made many friends. I’m not ready to see it sail away just yet. My way of dealing with all that, to try and make sense of the past, is to write about it. Out of that comes West Seattle Blues. It’s the second of my Seattle books, and this one takes place in March and early April of 1994. For anyone who knows music and Seattle, that’s a time to ring big bells. A time when the course of history altered a little. Here’s the cover.

Image

But it’s going to be Leeds that fills my time for a while yet. Not just living in the here and now, but also with my head in 1890/91.

And I teased with that talk about a quote, didn’t I? It’s one that’s made my month, probably my year. I had one a year ago from Candace Robb, one of the great historical crime novelists (and someone who’s become a treasured friend), whose work influenced the way I’ve looked at mine. My publishers used it on promotional material and it really helped. For Gods of Gold I plucked up my courage and approached the wonderful writer Joanne Harris, who’s read the Richard Nottingham books, to ask if she’d be willing to read this new one and, if she liked it, to write a few words about it. Well, she was willing, more than gracious and once she’d finished it, this is what she replied:

“Gods of Gold creates a vibrant sense of living history and of place, with strong, well-drawn characters and dialogue that’s just made for film, as well as a damn good story.”

Happy? I was over the moon. I still bloody am. As was my publisher. Thank you, Joanne. That, very proudly is going on the book cover.

And I wish you all a happy Valentine’s Day.

Joanne M. Harris – The Gospel of Loki

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The Gospel of Loki

Joanne M. Harris

Gollancz

 

Loki. The trickster. The joker in the pack of Norse Gods. Always something up his sleeve, a word to get out of any situation. The archetype of the outsider. He has the fatal charm and the ready wit. And now he comes into his own with Joanne (M.) Harris’ new book.

First off, it’s a cracking tale that drives along at a very quick pace, the type of book where you’ve gone through fifty pages and are still hungry for more. In part, that’s the material, but it’s also down to Harris’ easy, conversational style as Loki. At its heart, this is classic storytelling technique, with the overarching envelope story reaching from Loki emerging from Chaos to Ragnarok and what happens after. But there are plenty of little tales in there, starting with the playful and gradually growing darker as the end begins to gather on the horizon, all of them building the character.

It wouldn’t be Loki without the humour, of course, and there’s plenty of that. After all, he’s a trickster, something that crops up in all mythologies, the wild card, or in his case, wild fire. He’s not one to settle easily, especially when the rest of the Gods never warm to him and keep him out of the charmed circle. Even his ‘brother’, Odin, never fully trusts him. But deceit and mistrust is part of the air in Asgard, home of the Gods.

Although billed as an adult fantasy, this is perhaps more of an interpretation of Nordic myth, building on it to lets Loki shine in all his aspects (pun intended). He’s not lovable but Harris marks his charms work so the reader’s on his side. And as the book goes on he becomes some more troubled by doubts, but still on a headlong drive for revenge – amazing how powerful that can be.

Set outside of time, there’s the freedom for the author to put in some sly contemporary one-liners (chillax and Choose Life come to mind) and a small asides about this and that, including those folk who need to mourn the famous they’ve never known in life. And all perfectly in character with Loki’s lightly eviscerating style.

Many of Harris’ protagonists have been outsiders. Vianne Roacher, the leads in blueeyedboy, Holy Fools, Coastliners, Blackberry Wine – none of them have been an easy part of society. So Loki is a natural extension of that. But where many of those she’s created before have redeeming qualities, they can be hard to find in Loki – unless you count regret. But even then, it’s part of the stew in his head.

Wonderfully paced, the sense of doom slowly encroaching until it becomes unstoppable as the manifestation of the Prophecy, events set in motion before the beginning – but also part of a long con – it’s a book of laughter and tears. You’ll embrace Loki even as you dislike him, and that’s a fine balancing act for a writer to achieve. ‘Gospel,’ of course, is a conceit, a world loaded with many connotations and quite deliberately chosen. But every word is true. Apart from the ones that aren’t, of course.

Read and enjoy, and try to manage what the Greeks hoped to achieve – balance order and chaos. It’s a joyous, terrifying, tumultuous ride. And there’s undoubtedly more to come.