Dissolution by
C.J. Sansom
hbk out June 03
Published by Macmillan
at Ł16.99
Pick pretty much any period in human history and you’ll be able to find a crime writer using it in their work. First time novelist Sansom has plumped for Tudor England. Henry VIII is on the throne, has proclaimed himself Supreme Head of the Church, and the dissolution of the monasteries is underway. When one of Thomas Cromwell’s commissioners, responsible for investigating the monasteries, is found murdered at the Scarnsea monastery on the Sussex coast and a black cockerel ritually sacrificed on the church altar, it falls to lawyer Matthew Shardlake and assistant Mark to find those responsible for the treachery. Following in the tradition of The Name Of The Rose or Cadfael, this will particularly please those who like ecclesiastical whodunits with lashings of period detail. The frozen Sussex coastal marshland is beautifully described as well. Shardlake is a great supporter of the Reform and only too glad to see the corrupt and moneyed monks stripped of their wealth and power. He is an irascible character, plagued with pain from his hunchback and the unremitting cold, who does not suffer fools gladly. History scholar and solicitor Sansom uses Shardlake to explore the clash between church and state and the political and religious beliefs of the time. And in the process of his enquiries the lawyer is forced to face up to some unpleasant truths about the new state of affairs he is helping create. Not a book to race through but one to immerse yourself in.
Manchester Evening News 12.7.03
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries set on the mean streets of Manchester)
Dissolution by
C.J. Sansom
