Tag Archives: Leeds

The Price of Revenge: The Blood Covenant

27 Monday Jun 2022

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Review: The Blood Covenant, by Chris Nickson
Severn, 2021. 212 pp. $29

Leeds, 1823. Simon Westow, a thief-taker, meaning someone who retrieves stolen goods for a fee, hears from a doctor friend about two deaths that disturb him deeply. A pair of young boys has been murdered, apparently by a factory overseer. Leeds, starting to gain a reputation for its textile mills, witnesses a great deal of industrial child abuse. That’s because children, hired to scoot below the machinery to perform certain tasks, rebel against the long hours of exhausting labor, and the foremen don’t spare the rod.

J. M. W. Turner’s 1816 watercolor, Leeds (courtesy Yale Center for British Art, via Wikimedia Commons)

Since Simon himself just managed to escape that life and has two young boys of his own, the news of the deaths causes him sleepless nights. On one such, he goes for a walk and happens on a young man, throat cut and hand severed, being pulled from the river.

Despite Simon’s curiosity and principles, none of this need have anything to do with him. Leeds mill owners are beyond the law, for this is early nineteenth-century England, and money buys many things, including constables and magistrates. And Simon, though he’s investigated murders before, prefers to stick to thief-taking, a less dangerous, better-paying proposition — not to mention he’s recovering, slowly, from an illness for which a doctor friend has no name.

But when circumstances connect the boys’ deaths and that of the man pulled from the river — none too convincingly, I might add — Simon begins to probe all these crimes, hoping to find a measure of justice in a society where the word has little meaning. Before he’s done, many bodies will fall, mostly in hand-to-hand combat, of which The Blood Covenant provides many scenes. Leeds is one rough town, and if you wish to live out your portion of natural days, you’d best keep a well-sharpened knife in your pocket and know how to use it.

Nickson, the author of the excellent mystery series featuring the Leeds policeman Tom Harper, set toward the end of the century, has once again shown the gritty side of a cruel city. How people managed to live in that place back then makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. That the disenfranchised receive no protection from the law goes without saying. Further, Nickson reminds readers about the evils of the factory system, which remain with us, if in different forms, if in sweatshops overseas.

Nevertheless, though the first three installments in this series may deserve the name mystery — I haven’t read them — this fourth volume doesn’t. Few puzzles emerge demanding solution, or, to put it another way, every question has an answer easily obtainable by putting a coin in the proper palm. Rather, the narrative offers a progression of violent confrontations, as the evildoers will stop at nothing to have their way. That requires our hero to remain vigilant, constantly looking over his shoulder, and he must dig deeply into his resolve and skill. Consequently, given that framework and the public stakes of justice for those who never receive any, The Blood Covenant feels more like a thriller.

Mystery or thriller, the chief pleasure here, aside from the historical atmosphere, is the plot, which moves rapidly. The characters, though, seem flat to me, either all good or all bad, with one crucial exception — Jane, Simon’s friend and associate, whose street smarts, surveillance skills, and knife handling put his in the shade. A nice reversal, there, and Jane’s inner conflicts offer complexity too. Raped by her father at a young age, then pushed onto the street, she has a particular view of life that stands out in even this novel of death and heartbreak.

As for the storytelling, I prefer the Harper novels, though again, I admit that The Blood Covenant may be an outlier within its series. The narrative tells far more often than it shows, sometimes to state or repeat the obvious. The descriptions have little or no emotional resonance, precise though they may be in detail, as with this one, about a mill owner’s home:

It was a room to impress guests, decorated in the finest taste that money could purchase: a wallpaper of pale, comforting blue and white stripes, an oil painting of a naval battle hanging over the mantel, long-clock ticking soft and serene in the corner. The chairs were upholstered in deep blue velvet. A plush Turkey rug covered the polished floorboards. It was all understated, a dignified announcement that Arden had arrived, that he was respectably rich these days. It was exactly what people expected from a house in Park Square.

Nickson plainly has a cause, and a worthy one, about wealth perverting the law. The pages do turn easily, as you wonder how Simon will finesse or force his way past the barriers that keep getting placed in his path. But if you read The Blood Covenant, you may find the theme and story the most rewarding aspects of the novel.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Rough Work: The Molten City

29 Monday Jun 2020

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Review: The Molten City, by Chris Nickson
Severn, 2020. 224 pp. $29

When we last met Detective Inspector Tom Harper in these pages, in Gods of Gold, it was 1890. The young man from the Leeds slums worked a grim job in his gritty native city, splitting his energies between keeping watch over the impending violence from a gasworks strike and scrambling to search for a missing child. Harper sympathized with the strikers, but the law was the law and favored gentlemen of property, against which he was helpless; more immediately, he feared that if he didn’t find the child soon, she’d die. Not all was pain and suffering in his life, however. He worked with a devoted sergeant, Billy Reed, who became a friend. And Tom was about to marry a widow, Annabelle, of independent mind and income.

Now, it’s 1908, and Detective Superintendent Harper is the number-two man in the Leeds constabulary. Annabelle and he have a sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary, active in the woman’s suffrage movement, as is her mother. Billy Reed has died. Harper no longer hears as well as he used to, and his reflexes have slowed. But little else in his landscape has changed. Having arranged security for a royal visit — receiving a signed appreciation from His Majesty, Edward VII, no less — his reward is to protect Prime Minister Asquith when he gives a speech in Leeds.

Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith (date unknown), whose face, the historian George Dangerfield later wrote, was “bland and weary . . . in which frankness and reserve had long fought themselves to a stand-still.” (The Strange Death of Liberal England, p. 4; photo courtesy George Grantham Bain collection, Library of Congress; via Wikimedia Commons)

Where few Britons would dare shout insults or complaints at their king and queen, many would jump at the chance to throw brickbats at Mr. Asquith for his broken promises. Poor workingmen and suffragists are the most likely to riot—including Mary, perhaps, or so her parents fear. Meanwhile, Harper has stumbled over evidence that, fifteen years ago, two children were snatched from their parents, perhaps “purchased” to live in a wealthy home where the mistress of the house has been unable to bear her own.

Had I read the intervening volumes since City of Gold, The Molten City might seem like yet another entry in a familiar formula, what some series can devolve into after a while. (Incidentally, all the volumes bear titles with metallic metaphors.) Yet this novel, like its progenitor, has so much going for it that you have to give it, and the author, their due.

First, there’s the atmosphere — political, social, physical, familial, you name it — which, to me, does far more than set the scene. Tom Harper, as the incorruptible, hard-working utterly dedicated police officer, with nary a social prejudice to his name and a firm belief in feminism, at times seems a little too good to be true. However, his feelings for and about Leeds, conveyed through these descriptions, show me that he loves his city and its people, and that his desire to serve is completely genuine. He stands for something.

That makes his perfection easier to swallow, and Nickson takes care not to let Harper’s halo shine among the populace, who wouldn’t see it, anyway. The rich treat him like a hireling, whom they’ll indulge with an audience if it suits them, not acknowledging that a criminal inquiry compels them to; the poor hate him on sight, because coppers are coppers. They’re none of ’em trustworthy.

Nickson uses simple language to set his scenes, with sparing economy:

The smoke and stink from the tanneries and factories rose up the hillside. Identical, anonymous streets of back-to-back houses. Away from the moor, there wasn’t a tree or a splash of colour to be seen. Someone’s washing hung from a line high across the cobbles, already turning grey from the soot in the air.

Attention to the character of Harper’s environment achieves one other storytelling goal of note. Since this is a mystery, which must live on “no — and furthermore,” many such narratives rely on plot points to deliver the obstacles, sometimes smoothly, otherwise seeming contrived. Nickson’s focus on Harper and his city means that the tension need not result from exterior forces, and that what’s within may raise the stakes. For instance, child snatching means more than a morally repugnant crime to Harper’s corps of detectives, several of whom suffered childhoods full of fear and violence that the authorities did nothing to assuage. Finding the missing children therefore becomes a personal quest, not just part of their job.

I also like how Nickson fuses the political and social issues of the day with the crime, his protagonist, and the Harper family. On every page, you see some aspect of how privilege influences or defines justice, and how each Harper works to change that, even as they remain pessimistic, to varying degrees, about the long-term outcome. And while they agree in sum about the importance of social change, the details get in the way, so that though they love one another, they don’t always get along.

As a consequence, The Molten City, despite its heroic paragon, delivers a satisfying mystery and a vivid portrait of a socially fragmented England.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

The Late Victorian Underworld: Gods of Gold

31 Monday Oct 2016

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Review: Gods of Gold, by Chris Nickson
Severn, 2014. 212 pp. $29

The gasworkers’ union of Leeds, England, has walked off the job, and management has called in scabs (“blacklegs,” in British parlance) to break the strike. The union men will defend their turf with their fists, if necessary, whereas the owners have no qualms calling in the army and having the police read the Riot Act, which would allow the troops to fire on anyone refusing to disperse. That prospect appalls Detective Inspector Tom Harper, who grew up in a poor Leeds backstreet, and whose loyalties lie with the strikers. But such are the social tensions of 1890. And in a city where gas lights industries and the more affluent homes and shops, the police are there to support the rights of property, with justice often coming a distant second.

Harold Gilman's painting of Leeds Market, 1913 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Harold Gilman’s painting of Leeds Market, 1913 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

If Tom needed any further lessons in that hard truth, he has them in the case of Martha Parkinson, a nine-year-old girl who’s gone missing, and whose drunken, deadbeat father has been murdered. Desperate to find the girl alive, Tom enlists the aid of the Parkinsons’ neighbors, who’d normally look on the constabulary as enemies. But because it’s a missing child, who could have belonged to any family–and because Tom used to walk the beat in that neighborhood, where he built a reputation for honesty and fairness–the locals agree to help. But information comes in minuscule grains, and people fear even to reveal that little, which tells Tom that someone powerful is behind the crimes against the Parkinsons. Sure enough, that power causes ever-increasing mayhem, as more murders follow. But though Tom’s immediate superior sympathizes with the detective’s dedication (though not his politics), orders are orders, and Tom has to devote himself to protecting the strikebreakers when he fears that young Martha may die, if he doesn’t find her soon.

Among the many pleasures Gods of Gold offers is this strong sense of time and place. This is a short novel, and Nickson spends few words on description. Yet he shows the grit underfoot, how the poor age prematurely because of hard work or drink, the darkness that envelops their homes, or the filthy air of Leeds:

From November to March soot lingered around town in clinging, harsh palls of dark fog. It made men cough and spit black phlegm, the stink of industry the price of the town’s success. The snow was grey before it even touched the ground.

In such a place, life has sharp edges and crime its attractions, as with the man “who’d never held a real job but made his living like a magpie, stealing the shiny things he saw.” Images like that stay with me.

Nickson takes care to sketch in the background characters. Tom’s sidekick, Billy Reed, is an ex-soldier who drinks too hard–trying to forget the war in Afghanistan–and who loses his self-control, beating a witness who refuses to talk. This is the stinking guts of police work, and Nickson papers over nothing. The difficulty of apprehending a criminal, and the lack of resources that limits the police, come through loud and clear in small details, as when Tom is forever having to walk places to conduct his investigations, should the horse-drawn tram not be running, or he’s feeling too light in the purse to pay for a hackney.

On a lighter side, Tom’s engaged to marry a widow, Annabelle, who owns a tavern and a couple bakeries. She’s a businesswoman with a mind of her own, and she constantly surprises him with new ideas. When first introduced, she’s installing light bulbs in her tavern and tells Tom that electricity is the future–which is not only correct, it’s an understated comment on the strike, a suggestion that what Leeds is fighting over will soon pass, no matter which side wins. More importantly, she’s got more money than Tom does and greater financial security, a gender-role reversal that feels different from what he was taught to believe. But wise, loving soul that he is, he sees nothing wrong in it. Feminism in late Victorian England; how refreshing.

Gods of Gold promises to be the first of a series, and that’s good news. But if I had my druthers, I’d want Nickson to pay attention to a couple literary tics. His narrative sometimes repeats itself, as with “how-could-he” questions (“how could Tom prove such-and-such, if. . . .”), which I take as authorial worries that the reader won’t connect the dots. Rest easy, Mr. Nickson; your narrative speaks for itself. And though he excels at the “no–and furthermore” aspect of storytelling, fashioning the case one bit at a time, as with a mosaic, a few setbacks get resolved a mite too easily, as with the consequences of Billy Reed smacking a witness around too hard.

But I look forward to further installments of Detective Inspector Harper’s exploits.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.