A visit from Chris Nickson plus a chance to win a book!

Because I write historical fiction, it follows that I read a lot of it. I have been a fan for some time of Chris Nickson and his series of historical crime novels set in early eighteenth century Leeds featuring Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds. The first in the series was The Broken Token, published in 2010, and the latest - Come The Fear - is published this week.

Against the backdrop of the pre-railway, pre-industrial city populated by wealthy cloth merchants, pimps, prostitutes and beggars, Nottingham maintains an uneasy law and order on the streets, not only among the destitute but those who use their wealth to hide their crimes. He often despairs of his fellow man and is not unknown to stretch the law when push comes to shoved but he is an honest man and struggles to achieve justice for the have-nots and well as the haves. The crimes he investigates are brutal and hard for him, a loving family man, to bear but on he struggles.

I am pleased to welcome Chris to my blog. So it’s over to him...

When I wrote The Broken Token I had no thoughts of it becoming a series. It was simply there, a book, and when someone wanted to publish it all I felt was palpable relief that become joy as I held it in my hand. When my publisher asked what I was going to do next, though, a series seemed like the obvious answer. I already had a plot for a second book and it would fit. I had my characters, now firm in my head. In short, it seemed like the easy way out. So Cold Cruel Winter was born.

By then I was completely engaged with my main characters: Richard Nottingham, Constable of the City of Leeds, his family, John Sedgwick, his deputy, Josh Forrester, the lad he takes on, Amos Worthy the procurer. They’d become part of me and I wanted to know what was happening in their lives. That led to The Constant Lovers and now Come the Fear plus the fifth book, which I’ve just completed. 

Not all of them are still there. Just as in life, characters in a series change. They grow, move on, die (life in Leeds during the 1730s could be harsh). There are new additions, in several ways. Writing a series of books, even crime books, can be a little akin to penning a soap opera. For me, at least, my characters are more important than the crime. I care about them and their lives. They’re family to me.

I know them so well but none of them has a clear face in my mind. That would simply be too concrete. It’s one reason why a TV adaptation (though it’ll never happen) would scare me. From then on the characters I wrote would be fixed as the actors and I’d see them differently. It reminds me of what Irish fiddler Martin Hayes said about Irish music. For so many years the tradition had evolved, each player adding something to a tune. Once the first recordings by Michael Coleman were released, that performance became definitive and the music was fixed in stone. I prefer a little fluidity. As it is, even the audiobook of The Broken Token scares me a little. An actor will give voice to these people and these may not be the voices I hear. (One thing about being a writer is that it’s fine to hear voices in your head.)

There are a few parallels between Richard Nottingham and the sheriffs of the Westerns that were part of my childhood. Or there are in the first couple of books. He’s a straight arrow, to a degree the person I’d like to be. But black and white has a habit of bleeding into shades of grey. That is, perhaps, more realistic. But there’s still so much honesty in him that, to a degree, it shames who I am. I like him. If he was a real person I’d want to know him, I’d trust him – with my life.

Maybe we write the people we’d like to be, both good and bad. I don’t know, and I don’t want to investigate the psychology of it. It’s better just to let it flow and have them in my head. My father, who was a writer of TV plays in the 1960s, once told me, ‘If you create a fully-formed character, people will follow him anywhere.’ I still don’t know if it’s true, but it’s something I keep trying to put into action. Whether I’ve succeeded or not is up to the reader.

For me, the books had to be set in Leeds. Never mind that I hadn’t lived there since I was 21 (many years ago now), or that I’d spent longer elsewhere. It was where I was born and raised, the place that formed and nourished me. I knew it in my bones the way I could never know anywhere else. I felt it in my blood. I’d been a student of Leeds history for quite a few years. I knew its past, the money and a few of the dark secrets. My characters were Leodensians through and through. It was home to them the way it always will be to me.

Once I decided I had a series I did make some rules, though. The most important is that anyone can die. Being a central character doesn’t guarantee immortality. In life, anything can happen to anyone, and in this brutal time, the life span was far lower than it is now.

The other rule was that this series wouldn’t be endless. I’d stop at 10 books, or fewer if I felt I’d run out of things to say. I don’t want to repeat myself. I actually have too much respect for Richard Nottingham to do that to him and dilute the impact he has on me. That said, the fourth book is ready to come out…

Thank you, Chris. 

Come the Fear is published on August 30^th by Severn House Publishing. 

You can catch up with Chris and Richard Nottingham on his blog here. 

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To win a copy of Chris’s first novel in the series, The Broken Token, just add a comment below and I’ll pluck the lucky winner's name at random.