Novels

The Keeker Seam is Jez Lowe’s FOUTH novel, following on from “The Dillen Doll” in 2017, “The Corly Croons” in 2019 and “Piper’s Lonnen” in 2022, and continues the adventures of Evan Piper, as he returns to mid-19 ^th Century Tyneside with all its curious characters and outlandish ways, plus of course the rich tradition of music and song that erstwhile “Stranger from the South” finds so captivating.

A quote from the rear cover text –

“A 19 ^th Century village in County Durham is blighted by an all-too familiar tragedy, an explosion down the mine, but this time with a curious twist that sends waves of surprise and confusion across the region. It is left to a newly arrived young policeman to solve the mystery, in the face of hostility from the mine-owners, suspicion from the miners and their families and an over-arching web of prejudice that reaches out from a distant foreign land. Only a scattering of odd characters and Tyneside eccentrics reach out to help him, along with a mysterious woman who captivates all those who come in contact with her.”

Published in 2017, with an accompanying CD of traditional Tyneside songs, “The Dillen Doll” was Jez Lowe’s first foray into the literary world, and was published by Badapple Books.

Leaning heavily on the balladry of traditional folk songs and the real-life characters of historical Tyneside, Jez imagined the background story of the eponymous heroine of a widely-known and plaintively simple Northumbrian ditty entitled “Dol Li A”.

This mysterious, melodically-hypnotic folk song, with a dozen or so child-like lines and an enigmatic heroine, has survived in popularity for over three hundred years. It vibrates with the echoes of cobbled Newcastle streets, a busy quayside and a bustling River Tyne. But who was the woman who inspired the ballad?

Long immortalised in street rhyme, Jez Lowe’s central character is a simple quayside scullery-girl called Dolly Coxon, who finds true love against a backdrop of peril and treachery, as all around her heated talk of imminent war and desperate immigration casts fear and dread through the crowded alleys and chares. With the help of a rag-tag of musicians, agitators, camp-followers, sailors, soldiers and men of the cloth – all committed to the cause of finding justice and freedom for the common working man – Dolly unravels the history of a Genoan folk hero in exile, and writes herself into a new chapter of English folklore.

The second novel, published by Badapple Books in October 2019, again digs deep into the folk-song tradition of Newcastle Upon Tyne, but moves on three decades from “The Dillen Doll”, though with several of that story’s characters making a reappearance. By now, the ballad tradition of Tyneside has morphed into a movement known as “The Bards of The Tyne”, with songwriters, poets and songsters utilising both the established local printing industry and the emerging popularity of the music-halls to establish a wide and devoted following among the local populace. But there lurks a dark underbelly of corruption and skullduggery beneath the joviality and music, and the arrival of a policeman from London, one Inspector Evan Piper, with some serious questions to ask, causes some uneasy ripples in the calm surface of the River Tyne.

Jez Lowe’s third novel, “Piper’s Lonnen”, published by Badapple Books in July 2022.
The bleak hills of Northumberland boast many myths and legends. Tales of blood-soaked battles and ghost-ridden tragedies told in Border Ballads and local folklore have long been common currency among North Country folk. Even stranger sagas, telling of shape-changing Braags, blood-thirsty Redcaps and slithering Yottuns have haunted these wild lands for generations.
But in an enlightened Victorian age, can such stories really explain the abduction of a skilled musician, or the appearance of outlandish figures emerging from the hills to terrorise the people of remote towns and villages? Or is there something more earth-bound and yet equally sinister at the roots of the mystery?
Reluctant to risk their own reputation on such a curious investigation, the Tyneside Constabulary once more call upon the services of the stranger from the south, Inspector Evan Piper, to delve deep into this rural conundrum. “Use a Piper to find a piper” is their wry maxim, as they dispatch the wary young man into the wild unknowns of the Borderlands, towards the forbidding track known as Piper’s Lonnen, with only a hard-drinking Hexhamshire labouring lad and a parson’s wife as his companions.