Two Bronze Pennies

Author Chris Nickson writes about Leeds, England at the turn of the century in a very realistic light.   He writes historical mysteries with an attention to detail that makes the story come alive in the reader's mind.  This reviewer has also been watching The Murdoch Mystery series on television recently, so the as Nickson describes the atmosphere of the area and places the characters in the historical time period, I can picture a similar scene from my television viewing.

Two Bronze Pennies takes place in Leeds focusing on the Jewish quarter of the city, the Leylands.
As Nickson describes the area the people are living in, the pubs, the housing and the police precinct the reader gets a feel for the poverty level and the way of life there. Our main character, Police Inspector Tom Harper is newly married to a pub owner, who also has opened bakery businesses in the area.  She is a successful business woman, which it seems is unusual for the time, and a widow.
Harper is also not a wealthy man, he is a copper who works hard and long hours using whats available at that time in history to detect and solve murders.  Criminology is much more simple and harder to solve then.

The case be investigated in this novel, the second int he series, is about a young Jewish man that has been murdered.  The book exposes the undercurrent of anti- semitism that was event at that time in England.  Also brought into this story is the disappearance of Louis Le Prince, a gentleman who was working on a motion picture camera invention.   Le Prince disappeared and it was rumored that Thomas Edison living in New York had something to do with his disappearance.  Edison was also at this time developing his moving motion picture camera.  History has Le Prince getting the first patent for the camera, but Edison trying to dispute it.  This book touches on that rivalry.

A fun mystery with wonderful attention to detail of the time and place in history.  It would have been a bit better if it had tied the Le Prince mystery into the main murder mystery that Harper is investigating as a plot twist at the end.  This reader was actually waiting for that to happen.