Dissolution by C.J.Sansom

The Hunchback of Westminster...
Had it been situated in the Middle Ages, it would have been a mixture of Ellis Peter's Cadfael and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

A crime has been committed in a monastery, and a commissionner has been sent to solve the problem.
The difference lies in the fact that it's under Henry the VIIIth, when he decides to dissolve the convents and monasteries, officially to make papists disappear, but, unofficially, to gain territories and money.

And it's this atmosphere that is really interesting in the book, because the clues of who the murderer was are given very early in the book, and the suspense is not enormous.

What is interesting, is the way a strong reformer like Shardlake, a follower of Cromwell, ends with less convictions, so that he even, for a brief moment, thinks a relic could cure his infirmity...

Apparently, the Tudor times are quite fashionable nowadays, with all the films and books around the Boleyns ( we have the second season of "the Tudors"  on TV at the moment ) and around Elizabeth the first.

I'm not complaining, as I like this period very much. Even if the French, in the books and films are always the villains...

Comments

[Kevin]

Funny that, about the French being the perennial enemy in a book set in Tudor England. By my reckoning, the perennial enemy at the time were the Spanish. No good, sneaky little sods always going around being evil. The French were a teeny weeny bit better. Henry quite liked Francoise Premier, I think. At the field of the Cloth of Gold he had a tent with a fountain pouring wine 24 hours a day, and another pouring beer for the English Peasants. All I can think is that the beer must have been damned flat.

I agree that the clues are given early on, in Dissolution, but you must be a lot more perceptive than me, as I didn't work it out until quite late. But then I enjoyed it for the characterisation. I really do think that Matthew Shardlake is one of my favourite characters in Fiction, close behinf Thursday Next, but I'm not telling you about her!

I do think that Dissolution was probably the weakest of his books, and I do think that they get stronger. I don't think that it was anything like the Name of the Rose, the similarity is just in the setting. But when you think that the protagonist is a lawyer, not a monk, then the similarity goes away. Well, it does for me! In the Rose, and all of the Ellis Peters stories, the Monastery is going nowhere, I'd say it was as safe as the Bank of England, but that is no recommendation these days. In Dissolution the story takes place in a Monastery, but it's a monastery in it's last days, and you know that the characters see that end in sight. Other Monasteries around are surrendering to the King. It really is the end of an age. For me, that is what creates the special nature of Dissolution. And besides all that. Matthew Shardlake ROCKS!