Dissolution Dark Fire Sovereign (Re-read) Revelation Heartstone
All by C J Sansom.
As far as historical fiction goes, I’m much more interested in the biography genre than the murder mystery genre. But there are some exceptions to that rule and Sansom’s series of mysteries set in Tudor England with his hunchback lawyer sleuth, Matthew Shardlake, is one of them. I have a great fondness for Matthew.
Partly, I guess, because I find the period interesting and partly because Shardlake is such an appealing character. Full of human foibles, never perfect, often harsh, grumpy and afflicted with other vices, yet in the end good-hearted at the core.
I also love the no holds barred descriptions of medieval life and the way that the author drops in little tidbits here and there which show how the people of the time make sense of their lives, without the knowledge of how the world works that we have in modern times. So you have sailors talking about the strange, colourless drink they discovered on a trading voyage with the Polacks – wodky. <g> Or the black liquid with the terrifying ability to set things on fire that so appals and mystifies our characters in Dark Fire – petroleum. And I just loved the inn that proudly displays the huge thigh bone (obviously a dinosaur fossil) ‘of a giant’ that was washed up on shore one day just yards away.
I re-read Sovereign – it was the first of these I encountered, a while back, but turned out to be in the middle of the series, so I figured it was worth reading again to cement the timeline and bridge the gap between the first two and last two.
All in all, I've had an enjoyable time working my way through the series and it's going to be something of a wrench dragging myself out of Tudor England...
LabRat
Athos: If you'd told us what you were doing, we might have been able to plan this properly. Aramis: Yes, sorry. Athos: No, no, by all means, let's keep things suicidal.
