Free from all Danger

by Chris Nickson

Overview

Richard Nottingham discovers that a new, more ruthless breed of criminal has colonised the city when he returns as Constable of Leeds.

October, 1736. Lured out of retirement to serve as Constable once again, Richard Nottingham finds Leeds very different from the place he remembers. Many newcomers have been attracted by the town's growing wealth, but although the faces have changed, the crimes remain the same, as Nottingham discovers when a body is found floating in the River Aire, its throat cut.

What has changed is the fear that pervades the town. With more bodies emerging and witnesses too frightened to talk, Nottingham realizes he's dealing with a new kind of criminal, someone with no respect for anything or anyone. Someone who believes he's beyond the law; someone willing brutally to destroy anyone who opposes him. To stop him, Nottingham will need to call in old favours, rely on trusted friendships, and seek help from some very unlikely sources.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847518675
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	05/01/2019
Series:	A Richard Nottingham Mystery , #7
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Chris Nickson is a well-known music journalist with over 30 non-fiction books to his credit. He is the author of six previous novels in the Richard Nottingham series, and five Tom Harper Victorian mysteries. Having lived in the USA for 30 years, he has recently returned to his native Leeds.

Read an Excerpt

Sometimes he felt like a ghost in his own life. The past had become his country, so familiar that its lanes and its byways were imprinted on his heart. He remembered a time when he’d been too busy to consider all the things that had gone before. But he was young then, eager and reckless and dashing headlong towards the future. Now the years had found him. His body ached in the mornings, he moved more slowly; he was scarred inside and out. His hair was wispy and grey and whenever he noticed his face in the glass it was full of creases and folds, like the lines on a map. Sometimes he woke, not quite sure who he was now, or why. There was comfort in the past. There was love.
  Richard Nottingham crossed Timble Bridge and started up Kirkgate, the cobbles slippery under his shoes. At the Parish Church he turned, following the path through the yard to the graves. Rose Waters, his older daughter, married and dead of fever before she could give birth. And next to her, Mary Nottingham, his wife, murdered because of his own arrogance; every day he missed her; missed both of them. He stooped and picked a leaf from the grass by her headstone. October already. Soon there would be a flood of dead leaves as the year tumbled to a close.
  Most of the people he cared about lay here. John Sedgwick, who’d been his deputy and his friend. Even Amos Worthy. The man had been a panderer, a killer, but they’d shared a curious relationship of hatred and friendship until cancer turned him into a husk and finally claimed him.
  And now there were just two left alive. Richard and Emily Nottingham. Himself and his younger daughter. She ran a school for poor young girls and she had her man, Rob Lister, the deputy constable of Leeds these days. They were both young enough for life to wind out endlessly into the distance, its possibilities broad and open.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/18/2017
Set in 1736 Leeds, Nickson’s superior seventh Richard Nottingham novel (after 2013’s Fair and Tender Ladies) finds the retired constable in a somber mood on a visit to the graves of his wife and older daughter. Richard’s spirits revive when the mayor asks him to serve in his old position on an interim basis after the unexpected death of the current constable. Richard’s return to duty soon causes tensions with the deputy constable, Rob Lister, his protégé and his daughter Emily’s lover. His immediate challenge is a series of seemingly unrelated murders that places him in the hot seat with the city’s leaders, who fear that the violence will undermine public confidence in them and harm business. When several local pimps disappear, Richard realizes that the players in the Leeds underworld have changed since he left his position. Meanwhile, his nascent efforts to rebuild his family add emotional depth. Nickson is at the top of his game in this fairly clued whodunit. Agent: Tina Betts, Andrew Mann (U.K.). (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly