A Det. Insp. Tom Harper Mystery
3 primary works
Book 1
June 1890. Leeds is close to breaking point. The gas workers are on strike. Supplies are dangerously low. Factories and businesses are closing; the lamps are going unlit at night.
Detective Inspector Tom Harper has more urgent matters on his mind. The beat constable claims eight-year-old Martha Parkinson has disappeared. Her father insists she's visiting an aunt in Halifax - but Harper doesn't believe him. When Col Parkinson is found dead the following morning, the case takes on an increasing desperation.
But then Harper's search for Martha is interrupted by the murder of a replacement gas worker, stabbed to death outside the Town Hall while surrounded by a hostile mob. Pushed to find a quick solution, Harper discovers that there's more to this killing than meets the eye - and that there may be a connection to Martha's disappearance.
Book 1
Book 2
Leeds, England, Christmas Eve, 1890. DI Tom Harper is looking forward to a well-earned rest. But it's not to be. A young man has been found stabbed to death in the city's poverty-stricken Jewish district, his body carefully arranged in the shape of a cross, two bronze pennies covering his eyes. Could someone be pursuing a personal vendetta against the Jews?
Harper's investigations are hampered by the arrival of Capitaine Bertrand Muyrere of the French police, who has come to Leeds to look into the disappearance of the famous French inventor Louis Le Prince, vanished without trace after boarding a train to Paris.
With no one in the close-knit Jewish community talking to the police and with tensions rising, DI Harper realizes he'll have to resort to more unorthodox methods in order to unmask the killer.