The Crooked Spire

April 14, 2014
In the year 1360, John, an itinerant carpenter and the hero of Nickson’s promising new historical series, arrives in Chesterfield, where he finds steady work helping to construct a church spire. When John discovers the body of his supervisor, master carpenter Will, inside the church tower, the local coroner investigating the crime considers him a suspect in Will’s murder. John joins the search for the killer after persuading the coroner of his innocence, but he soon breaks an arm in an accident that leaves him unable to ply his chosen trade. Will isn’t the last to die, and John himself falls under threat when he persists in probing the deaths and questioning the building practices that Will’s successor employs. Nickson (Fair and Tender Ladies and five other Richard Nottingham mysteries set in 18th-century Leeds) offers few surprises, but an affable lead and a convincing depiction of late-medieval England make this a satisfying comfort read. Agent: Tina Betts, Andrew Mann (U.K.).

Starred review from May 1, 2014
Nickson steps back in time to the mid-fourteenth century, 400 years earlier than his popular Constable Richard Nottingham series. John, a survivor of the plague that wiped out much of England's population (including John's father), finds work on the construction crew of a new church. Almost immediately, the man who hired him is found murdered, and soon after that, John (who found the body) is at the top of the suspect list. John's only hope of proving his innocence is to help the coroner find the real murderer. It's not an unfamiliar premisein fact, the innocent man, accused of a crime he didn't commit, fighting to find the real killer is a mainstay of the mystery genrebut this story's strong sense of time and place gives the story all the freshness it needs. Nickson paints precise pictures with words, vividly setting the post-plague backdrop: He could recall the crops rotting in the fields at harvest time, not enough people still alive to bring them in, and the cows lowing until they died, their carcasses stinking and covered with flies. He makes us feels as though we are living what seems like a fourteenth-century version of dystopia, giving this remarkable novel a powerful immediacy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)