Dissolution

A poor imitation of The Name of the Rose ( )

I've come rather late to this popular series. The book is now nineteen-years-old and the series is seven books strong. Worse than that, this book has been on my shelves for NINE YEARS (that's the curse of keeping a book database, you know stuff like this and can't hide behind I've had this for a while.)

Anyway, my wife and I finally listened to 'Dissolution' on a long drive and now I have to buy the other six books.

So, what's good about it?

Firstly, Sansom is completely comfortable with both the day-to-day life and the power politics of the Tudor period and he doesn't sugar-coat either. This isn't a nostalgia trip to jolly Olde England, it's a journey through a time of immense social turmoil when many of our current aristocracy and landed gentry established their wealth through the ruthless pursuit of land being taken from the monasteries by the King. Sansom makes it easy to visualise London as the pit it was in 1537. He mercilessly displays the thuggery and corruption of Thomas Cromwell and his Commissioners. He also shows how the monasteries had decayed into places that benefitted only the monks who live in them and who lived dissolute lives of indulgence that were far from the Rules of the Orders they were in.



Finally, there's the mystery. It's a good one. One of Cromwell's Commissioners, on a mission to force the Abbot of ancient Scarsea Monastery to agree to dissolve the monastery and transfer the lands to the King, has been decapitated in the monastery and the altar has been desecrated by the sacrifice of a black cockerel. Cromwell gives Shardlake a commission to keep the murder quiet, find the murderer and get the abbot's agreement to dissolution as quickly and quietly as possible. What follows is a twisty plot with more than one death, lots of suspects and a surprising amount of physical conflict.

It was a very entertaining read. I can see why this series is so popular and I will now join the ranks of the faithful following Shardlake's career through King Henry's bloody reign (the man had 57,000 people executed, including almost anyone who was ever a trusted advisor) and beyond.
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Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Have read a lot about Tudor England but not much about the dissolution of the monasteries. Got both an intriguing murder mystery and a good idea of what it must have been like to be at a monastery during this time. Look forward to reading more books in this series. ( )

Good yarn set in Henry VIII’s time, with our protagonist Shardlake a hunchback lawyer investigating a murder in a monastery at the behest of Thomas Cromwell, Henry's powerful chief minister. The monasteries are corrupt and many religious orders have lost their way, forgetting their vows of poverty and chastity. Cromwell is waging a campaign to have them closed and for the crown to inherit their wealth and most importantly their lands, which was the most important source of all income. Plausible tale with lots of three dimensional characters that keeps you guessing until the very end. ( )

A bit dull. ( )