Sovereign (The Shardlake series, 3)

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J. Sansom shows that, when it comes to intriguing Tudor-based narratives, Hilary Mantel has a serious rival . It’s a lot of bodies to choreograph, something that co-directors Juliet Forster, Mingyu Lin and John R Wilkinson do skilfully. It was pretty obvious and a little disappointing, but Sansom was still clever enough with how he integrated it to keep me reading. He came to prominence with his series set in the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century, whose main character is the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake.

I looked at the little houses along Petergate and thought again of the rule preventing citizens from casting sewage in the streets or in the river while the Progress was here. Shardlake had similar feelings about meeting his king; he couldn’t wait to behold the presence of King Henry VIII. Q. Ford Madox Ford’s underappreciated trilogy, The Fifth Queen, focuses on roughly the same period in English history as you do in Sovereign.

Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. With two mysteries to occupy his time, Shardlake begins his own investigation, though tries to keep the peace when the King arrives to celebrate with his subjects.

Shardlake manages, of course, to uncover the truth behind many of the crimes and conspiracies threatening his life and the peace of the kingdom. When matters however take a turn for the worst, Shardlake must decide whether his loyalties lie with his kingdom, or with his lady? When her lifeless body is however discovered in the chapel where she kept her nightly vigils, many believe that she was murdered by Viking raiders destroying the country. But apart from Dissolution, which is set in a monastery, none of the other books is set in a “closed” environment but rather in cities with plots set around the politics of the court.The inhabitants in the north, mostly still Papists, were less than pleased with the king, the destruction of their monasteries, the outlawing of their religion, and the forced acceptance of a new religion.