The New Eastgate Swing

Dan Markham Mystery #2

by Chris Nickson

Leeds, 1957: When enquiry agent Dan Markham and his new partner, retired Detective Sergeant Baker, take on a missing persons case, a simple matter turns into a murder investigation when a body is recovered from the River Aire. Nothing is what it seems. The dead man is an East German. A defector or spy? More mysterious deaths follow and the investigation takes a deadly turn as the pair try to track down a ruthless Russian assassin and Markham finds himself dragged into the heart of a Cold War – in Leeds.

Genres: Mystery

272 pages, Paperback

Published February 3, 2016

About the author

I'm a novelist and music journalist, the author of many books set between the 1730s and 1950s in Leeds, as well as others in medieval Chesterfield and 1980s Seattle.

Above all, though, its Leeds I love, the people, the sense of the place changing with time. Yes, I write mysteries, but ultmiateoly they're books about people and their relationships, and the crime becomes a moral framework for the story.

Reviews

[Ann Dewar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second in the Dan Markham series, set in 1950’s Leeds.

Clearly a lot of research has been done into the shops and areas of Leeds and their characters in the ‘50’s and although that is admirable in some respects, it sometimes reads like a satnav, with every street name mentioned as Markham navigates his way through the city centre and outskirts. This makes it extremely hard to immerse yourself in the plot, as does the excessive reference to jazz musicians and their music. These issues were similarly problematic in the first book and I’d hoped that they might have been ironed out as the series progressed.

What does help is the introduction of retired police officer, Baker, as Markham’s partner. For some reason he is a more plausible and well-rounded character than Markham, who always seems to me to be a bit useless - not ideal in the main character. I do think that the idea for the series is good and having Baker and Markham garner ‘skills’ from their war/national service is clever but unfortunately, for me, it just doesn’t flow well.

[Jan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chris Nickson has written another dense, layered thriller, smoky with jazz and 1950s Leeds.

I like the way he weaves the flawed, everyday tangle of PI Dan Markham's life amongst the seething richness of the city poor, with the chill strand of a very different post-war/Cold war set of people. Both strands are evoked with equal credibility.

The New Eastgate Swing, like Dark Briggate Blues before it, immediately plucks the reader out of today and sets them down in the raw recent past.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not generally my type of book but an enjoyable read. The setting in 1957 Leeds is rather emphasised and I'm not sure all the references to streets, shops, cafes etc were actually a help to the book's flow. There was also a heavy concentration of period details that I sometimes found distracting, leading me to look things up and sometimes challenge the accuracy! Nonetheless a strong narrative swept me along and I read it in a single concentrated session, finding myself needing to find out how the plot would resolve.