The Dead Will Rise

Starred review from January 9, 2023
It’s 1824 in Nickson’s excellent fifth whodunit featuring Leeds, England, thief-taker Simon Westow (after 2021’s The Blood Covenant), and Simon continues to make a solid living by retrieving stolen goods for a fee. Simon gets more than he bargained for when he’s approached by Joseph Clark, a foundry owner. One of Clark’s workmen is doubly bereft because his 10-year-old daughter died unexpectedly and, a week after the girl’s burial, her corpse was stolen. The theft comes amid reports of a rash of body snatching performed to provide cadavers for Edinburgh and London medical students to dissect. Though the missing body is not the typical type of stolen property Simon recovers, Simon accepts the job and enlists Jane, his scarily competent assistant, whom he rescued from homelessness and starvation, to help investigate. Simon and Jane soon find evidence of a local ring of body-snatchers reported to have already claimed seven corpses. Nickson keeps the story line intriguing despite the focus on a crime other than murder as he further develops his leads. This gritty and surprise-filled mystery will enthrall both newcomers and series fans. Agent: Tina Betts, Andrew Mann (U.K.).

February 15, 2023
Thief-taker Simon Westow, who normally retrieves stolen goods, stretches his remit to include stolen bodies in 1824 Leeds. Wealthy engineer Joseph Clark hires Simon and his helper, Jane, to find the body of Gwendolyn Jordan, his best worker's 10-year-old daughter, which has been stolen from her coffin. They start by tracking down the dress she was wearing, which is worth more, according to the law, than the body. Simon and Jane have built up a large network of people who notice things, so they have their informants look for the seller while they check cemeteries themselves. Meantime, much-married Amanda Parker wants to hire the pair to find Thomas Rawlings, who she claims cheated her out of 50 pounds. Though they have a bad feeling about the job, especially when Mrs. Parker wants Jane to pose as a prostitute, they decide to give it a few days. Jane's ability to vanish into the background makes her perfect at following people, and her skill with a knife has kept her safe. When they find Rawlings murdered, they suspect a connection with the body snatchers but resolve to tell no one until they can learn the names of the malefactors. It turns out that Harold Ackroyd, Peter Kingsley, and a muscleman known as the Irishman have stolen many more bodies than anyone suspected. Simon and Jane trace Ackroyd to a remote house, but their plan to catch the body snatchers fails, and the stakes are raised dramatically when the Irishman throws Jane off a bridge, turning a game of cat and mouse into a struggle over life and death. An action-packed mystery that provides interesting historical details about despicable crimes.

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February 15, 2023
Nickson's latest historical thriller in his popular Simon Westow series is set in Leeds, England, in 1824. Thief-taker Westow and his trusted accomplice, Jane, find themselves tangling with a gang of body snatchers who are digging up new graves and stealing the bodies, selling them for significant profits to doctors and academies doing anatomical research. When Simon learns that the grave robbers' latest victim is about the same age as his eight-year-old twin sons, he vows to find and destroy the gang. But the men who steal the bodies are ruthless and frustratingly elusive. When one of the gang members throws Jane off a bridge and badly injures her as a warning to her and Simon to back off, the violent act only renews the pair's determination to vanquish the gang and unmask the paymaster who's behind the scheme. Nickson's richly authentic descriptions of life in nineteenth-century Britain combine with a grisly plot and characters who jump off the page.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.