Dissolution (The Shardlake series, 1)

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Spanish Civil War, stripped of Hemingway's romance A review of Winter in Madrid, by Katherine Bailey, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 January 2008 How difficult to spot villain? - Very difficult--no foreshadowing/clues Time/era of story: - 1600-1899 He read history at Birmingham university and, after a PhD thesis on the British Labour party’s policy towards South Africa between the wars, left academia for a career in the law. Though he had always wanted to write and belonged to writers’ groups, he had expected to wait until he retired before finding the time to attempt a full-length novel. But in 2000 the death of his father left him with a small inheritance, enough to take a year off and give it a try.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the atmosphere that Sansom creates. He vividly recreates the turmoil of the period along with the sights, sounds and smells of the era. The reader feels the chill in his or her own bones as the characters struggle to stay warm in the middle of the freezing cold weather. This historical detail is engrossing and the story is a compelling one.This serves well as counterpoint to the somewhat out-of-his-depth character of Matthew Shardlake, the newly appointed King’s commissioner investigating the murder of the previous commissioner at the Monastery of St. Donatus the Ascendant. Shardlake is a moderately successful lawyer under the patronage of Lord Thomas Cromwell, now vicar general and responsible for the new Church of England. Not only is the king the head of the church, but he has been waging battles against those not to happy to be split from the Church of Rome. Sansom takes enough time to impress upon us the general perception that monasteries and other religious houses were seen both as sources of land and revenue for the king and his nobles and also an evil where the abbots, monks, novices, etc. were living a life of ease compared to the citizens. He is to follow the path of other celebrated performers, such as Derek Jacobi, who have found popular success solving crimes while dressed in period costume. Sansom, who has a history PhD from Birmingham University, is completing a story called Revelation, which the writer has suggested will tell of 'nasty things ... happening among the extreme Protestant sects in the capital'. After that, he hopes to produce a Shardlake novel set entirely in a courtroom. One critic has praised Sansom's 'superb approximation of the crucible of fear, treachery and mistrust that was Tudor England, and a memorably blood-swollen portrait of the ogreish Henry's inhumane kingship'.

And in my wilful blindness I had refused to see what was before my eyes. How men fear the chaos of the world, I thought, and the yawning eternity hereafter. So we build patterns to explain its terrible mysteries and reassure ourselves we are safe in this world and beyond.”And with a brutal gulp, Cromwell dissolved and swallowed the monasteries across England, beginning with smaller ones in 1536 and completing the dissolution of even the largest old ones by 1540, pensioning off a few monks but turning everyone else loose into the poor neighbouring townships. From the bestselling author of Winter in Madrid and Dominion comes the exciting and elegantly written first novel in the Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery series Dissolution is a book that perfectly captures the atmosphere and instability of England during the time Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church, creating not just religious uncertainty but also Political instability, but at the centre of this book is a murder mystery with all the intrigue and thrill from a great crime/ thriller.