The Blood Covenant (A Simon Westow Mystery Book 4)
Thief-taker Simon Westow and his partner, Jane, hunt down and return a pair of stolen candlesticks to wealthy factory owner Thomas Arden. They soon become embroiled in a series of vicious murders—men found slashed to death near Leeds Bridge in Yorkshire—and aware of the bodies of a pair of young boys who had been worked to death in one of the city’s mills, all linked to Arden and a business associate.
The Blood Covenant is the fourth in author Nickson’s Simon Westow series. It was prompted by the recent excavation of the bodies of factory children who had been buried in Ebenezer Chapel and, as Nickson acknowledges in the book’s afterword, was fueled by anger about the “short, hard lives” led by working men and women and their children in the early years of the 19th century. Nickson’s character Jane, in particular, bristles as she confronts her past and the person responsible for the abuse she suffered.
Nevertheless, the motivations of the wealthy pair who claim to have developed a blood covenant remain hidden, and so, too, are the ramifications of that covenant. Actions often cover similar or the same ground, tamping down suspense. Events for the most part involve characters tailing one another on Leeds’ streets, leaving readers to guess at actual workhouse conditions.
The Blood Covenant, as a result, kept this reader at a distance, not walking in the shoes of working men and women or alongside characters step by step.
