By C. J. Sansom

I tell you, C. J. Sansom stumbled on greatness when he came up with the idea of his Shardlake books, as did I when I chanced upon one in a discount bookstore and purchased it.

The premise is simple; somebody should have done this years ago. He has his version of Hercule Poirot, Matthew Shardlake. Whereas Poirot is a dandified, short Belgian with a distinctive upturned moustache and persistant stomach ailments, Shardlake is a self-conscious hunchback with anti-Papist beliefs. The real genius, however, is that he lives during the reign of King Henry VIII. There’s so much to play around with, a rich tapestry of history to weave during a time of great turbulence in England.

Sansom is a smart cookie. He did his PhD in history and knows this period inside-out, mixing prominent people and events of the time and marrying them with a murder-mystery.

This one is set at the time just after Henry tore himself away from the rule of Rome and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and God’s representative on earth. (He was, incidentally, the first monarch to carry the label “Defender of the Faith”, but this was actually awarded to him by the Pope after he quoshed an attempt to encourage him to split from Rome some years before it became convenient for him to do so.)

Henry has set about dissolving the monasteries, destroying anything that could be considered a relic or symbol of idolatry, and leading an unparalleled campaign of torture.

This story is based in south Essex, at a monastery in Scarnsea. Lord Thomas Cromwell, the vicar general, had despatched a commissioner, Robin Singleton, to the abbey. A note smuggled from the abbey informed him that Singleton had met a grisly end, his head lopped from his shoulders in the church, a cockerel sacrificed and its blood smeared over the altar in some sort of satanic ritual, and the sacred relic (the hand of the thief crucified by Jesus’s side) stolen.

What’s a lord commissioner to do in this situation? Send in another commissioner, that’s what, and the lucky gentleman is Matthew Shardlake, accompanied by his young associate, Mark Poer.

There are many distinctive characters in the story: The prior, Mortimer, who is a stickler for abusive discipline, causing one young boy to nearly die, before a dose of poison finishes the job before he can pass on incriminating evidence; the abbot, Fabian, desperate for Lord Cromwell to be informed of how helpful he’s been, in return for a nice pension; Brother Guy, a dark-faced infirmarian who is a master of producing medicine from herbs; the st-st-stuttering Brother Edwig, a penny-pinching miser who once tried to use blood collected from the monks to make sausages to give to the poor; Brother Jerome, a loudmouthed heretic, crippled after a spell on the rack on Cromewell’s orders.

There are very many twists and turns, Shardlake nearly coming up with the solution, only to be confronted by denials and alibis, bodies turning up elsewhere, and unpleasant meetings with Cromwell, trips to the tower, and descriptions of the misery of the poor, their children’s bloated bellies filled with worms whilst they have nothing but silly names such as Fear-God and Zealous, following the Zeitgeist.

The story is weaved with the execution of Anne Boleyn on trumped-up charges of adultery, after confessions were extracted by torture, and this was brilliantly factored into solution to the crime.

I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as Sovereign, but this is akin to saying I don’t enjoy A New Hope to the same degree as Return Of The Jedi.

This is a cracker of a series. I have the second book (Dark Fire) waiting on my bookshelf, though I’m trying to be disciplined and read something else about which I’m not so eager first. I’m not sure I’ll manage it

Tags: C. J. Sansom, Shardlake

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