Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-16
• Released on: 2007-03-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Independent
'Between them, Sansom and Starkey have the 16th century licked.'

Sunday Times
'A parchment turner, and a regal one at that.'

Independent on Sunday
It’s deeper, stronger and subtler than most novels in this genre
(including Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose) . . . ‘

Customer Reviews

The best Shardlake yet.
Having read the previous Matthew Shardlake novels I was eager to read this one. I wasn't disappointed - it is easily the best one yet.

What I liked most was the brilliant evocation of the cruelty of Tudor England. The religious fanaticism has been done before, as has the treachery and power politics along with the corruption, but the way these were all melded together and the thorny subject of judicial torture thrown in it made the story basically become a lot darker.

The idea of the events taking place within the enclosed world of the Royal Progress was a nice way of taking a murder mystery staple plot device and making it relevant to the period, a kind of Tudor "Murder on the Orient Express" if you like.

CL Sansom is a very good writer, he keeps the suspense up well and uses a lot of period detail. overall excellent, although I have to admit working out who the killer was quite a way before the end, even if I hadn't worked out exactly all the details.

Very Disappointing!
most of the positive reviews of this book must be coming from C.J.Sansom fans and in fairness the first two and the fourth novel of the Shradlake series are brilliant.
This third sequel though appears to have been part of a publisher's deal that had to be written without the author's heart in it.
The story is dragging on endlessly without many peaks, Shardlake is completely out of his wits and not himself. There are MANY mistakes like one minute he is riding, next sentence he is not, then he decides to wear a dagger in future and only the following sentence he is wearing one without having had the opportunity to obtain it. There are dozens of those minor mistakes which really annoy me especially since they appear within 2 subsequent sentences. This book is badly written and the story of stale. You can safely skip this one and proceed with 4th sequel.

Great stuff, a little too long
This third entry in the Shardlake series is as detailed and vivid as the previous two entries. The plot is rather convoluted and I found it a little implausible, though I was aware of the Blaybourne allegations from my reading of Yorkist history, and, of course, it must be admitted that Tudor history is replete with true occurrences that the most fanciful historical novelist would hardly dare invent (would a novelist ever invent the story of Henry VIII's six wives? no, it would probably be too implausible to make up!). I also thought this one was rather too long at 650 pages and I got just a tiny little bit tired of chapter after chapter ending with Shardlake bumping into one of his antagonists coming round the corner yet again. But this was all more than compensated for by the last 100 pages, full of such drama, horror and twists and turns that, in the words on the front cover of my edition, made me unable to prise myself from it.