Rusted Souls

May 1, 2020
Set in early-twentieth-century Leeds, England, Nickson's latest police procedural featuring DS Tom Harper offers authentic period ambience, engaging characters, and a realistic look at the challenges of policing without high technology. As usual, Harper has his hands full, first with an upcoming visit by the British prime minister, for which he must provide security, and, second, with investigating the implications of an anonymous letter suggesting that the kidnapping of two local children 15 years ago was connected to a baby-selling ring. The letter further implies that a wealthy local businessman and his wife bought two of the kidnapped youngsters. Meanwhile, two demonstrations are planned during the PM's visit?one by suffragettes and one by a gang of unemployed men. Both have the potential to create massive security headaches. Determined to crack the kidnapping case and ensure that the violence doesn't erupt during the visit, Tom finds his policing skills tested to their limits. A good read in this reliably entertaining series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from July 10, 2023
Leeds constable Tom Harper tackles a trio of cases on the eve of his 1920 retirement in Nickson’s standout 11th historical whodunit featuring the investigator (after 2022’s A Dark Steel Death). Alderman Thompson, who helped secure Harper’s position with the Leeds city police, has received a demand for £50 in exchange for the return of letters he wrote to his mistress, and he’s enlisted Harper to help find the letters and ward off the extortion. Meanwhile, Leeds has been rocked by a string of armed robberies targeting local jewelers, the latest of which turned deadly, and Harper learns that an all-female shoplifting and pickpocketing gang is headed for the city as well. It’s a lot of balls to keep in the air, and Nickson juggles them ably while leaving room to explore Harper’s tender relationship with his wife, Annabelle, who’s slowly succumbing to senility. It all culminates in a knockout conclusion that showcases Nickson’s unique blend of intricate plotting and well-rounded character development. Series devotees will be thrilled. Agent: Tina Betts, Andrew Mans Literary.

August 1, 2023
The 11th and final installment of Nickson's Tom Harper series ties up all the loose ends and breaks your heart. Harper is about to retire from the Leeds City Police, which he's served for many years. He lives in a suburban house he bought after his wife, Annabelle, was diagnosed with dementia and could no longer run the Victoria public house; his daughter, Mary, who's run a highly successful secretarial business since losing her fiance in the First World War, lives there with her parents, as does Annabelle's nurse, Julia. The last few weeks before Harper's retirement are filled with difficult and dangerous cases. Powerful Alderman Ernest Thompson, who's being blackmailed over some letters he foolishly sent to the much younger Charlotte Radcliffe, asks Harper to recover them without publicity. As difficult as that case turns out to be, the problems caused by the group of former soldiers robbing jewelry stores are more serious, for they've carefully planned each robbery and gotten away clean in a matter of minutes until one of them kills a bystander. Harper, who uses a small group of trusted allies to investigate the blackmail, has trouble keeping things quiet when some of the young men in thrall to Charlotte start to turn up dead in what look like accidents. On top of that, the police expect a gang of female shoplifters and pickpockets to descend on Leeds, as they already have on several other cities. Despite all these trials and tribulations, dealing with Annabelle's descent into her illness troubles Harper the most. An excellent procedural paints a painfully accurate portrait of dealing with dementia.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2023
It's 1920, Leeds Chief Constable Tom Harper is weeks away from retirement, and he's determined to clear three challenging final cases: finding the blackmailer targeting a local politician who had a brief, foolish fling with a young woman; stopping a series of brazen, daylight jewelry-store robberies; and preventing a group of bold female pickpockets from stealing everything in Leeds that's not nailed down. Although he's usually at his desk shuffling papers, Harper decides to get personally involved in his last cases. Plodding detective work, planning, intuiting, and following up hundreds of leads, results in a violent encounter that puts the lives of Tom and his team in grave danger. 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.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.