Tag Archives: CJ Sansom

#BookReview ‘Lamentation’ by CJ Sansom #Tudor #detective

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The Matthew Shardlake series by CJ Sansom is now my joint favourite series, along with Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles. The two series could not be different but they have one key thing in common: both are densely textured with social history that enlivens the story of such well-drawn characters. Lamentation is sixth in the Shardlake series, set at a critical time for the politics of England’s religion and for its ailing ruler, Henry VIII. CJ SansomThe king is slowly dying. Surrounded by loyal courtiers who disguise the true reality of his incapacity from the public, a power battle is underway for the influence of the king’s heir, his eight-year-old son Edward. As always at this time, we see Protestant versus Catholic set against the background of recovery from war the previous year with France when the Mary Rose was sunk in battle at Portsmouth. Heretics are being burned, an amnesty of banned books is announced and the haters of reformers such as Queen Catherine Parr attempt to smear her reputation. When Shardlake is called to Whitehall Palace to meet the Queen’s uncle, Lord Parr, he can never have expected the mess the Queen has got herself into. She has written a religious pamphlet ‘Lamentation of a Sinner’ which, if it falls into the wrong hands might see her burnt at the stake. She has kept it secret, even from her quixotic husband who may burn her if she tells him or burn her if she keeps it hidden from him. She hesitates, thinking it safely locked in a chest. But the document has vanished. The Queen asks Shardlake to retrieve it and save her honour, and her life.
Shardlake’s trail takes him back and forth across London from royal palaces to printers in the backstreets and meeting houses for radicals. Unwilling to draw his assistant Jack Barack into danger, he enlists the help of his young pupil Nicolas Overton. And all the time, Shardlake can’t shake the feeling he is being watched. As well as seeking the ‘Lamentation’, Shardlake has other difficulties. An ongoing case representing Isabel Slanning in a probate battle with her brother is turning toxic, Matthew’s relationship with Doctor Guy Malton is awkward as religious differences – Guy is a Catholic, Matthew is no longer sure what he believes in – widen, and his new steward does his job but is not likeable. And all the time he is working for the Queen, Shardlake entertains wistful romantic thoughts.
There are fascinating glimpses of characters we know from history who are key in the post-Henry VIII world. Prince Edward. The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Lord Cecil. Which makes the next book in the series, Tombland, particularly enticing.
The stakes are the highest yet. Magnificent.
BUY THE BOOK

Here are my reviews of the first five books in the series:-
DISSOLUTION
DARK FIRE
SOVEREIGN
REVELATION
HEARTSTONE

If you like this, try:-
‘Blackberry and Wild Rose’ by Sonia Velton
‘The Last Hours’ by Minette Walters
‘The Wonder’ by Emma Donoghue

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LAMENTATION by CJ Sansom #Tudor #detective https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5qW via @SandraDanby

Book Review: ‘Dominion’

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cj sansom - dominion 18-7-13You know that feeling, it happens once in a while, when you finish reading a book that was so good you want to go back to the beginning and start again? Well, it was like that for me with CJ Sansom’s Dominion.
It was the premise that caught my attention as soon as I read the pre-publication reviews: an alternate history set in Britain in 1952, peace is made with Hitler in 1941 which changes the direction of World War Two. An alternative world. Previously I had read one Sansom novel, Winter in Madrid, which I enjoyed; three of his Matthew Shardlake mysteries sit on my to-read shelf. After Dominion, I will turn to them quickly.
The story focusses on four main characters, a scientist, a civil servant, the civil servant’s wife, and a Gestapo officer based at Senate House in London, the tall university building being the Gestapo’s London HQ with torture cells in the basement. This is a different Britain, where Jews are being rounded-up and transferred to camps in the country, where the Isle of Wight is occupied by the German army [which is still fighting in Russia], and where it is rumoured in Berlin that Hitler is either dead or dying.
To say more would risk spoiling the plot twists, of which there are plenty. The darkness of the time is shown symbolically by the Great Smog which actually happened in London, December 1952. It sheds a stifling blanket of choking fog which stops life and blinds everything more than a foot away. The smog is a metaphor of course for the blindness of the Government, and much of the population, who accept their situation with apathy and do nothing to aid the Resistance led, inevitably, by Churchill.
Sansom’s central message is about the danger of nationalism and xenophobia and what, in the extremes, they can lead to. A subject which, as he says in the Appendices, he fears is all too relevant in modern Europe.
A thought-provoking read.
‘Dominion’ by CJ Sansom