Revelation by C.J. Sansom – A Review

Pages: 351
Published: 2008

Revelation is the fourth book in the Matthew Shardlake series. The lawyer is drawn into the hunt for a serial killer when a friend is murdered in a particularly horrible way. As the hunt goes on it becomes clear that the murderer is not killing for political reasons or for personal gain, and the hunters can’t understand him at all. Most of them think he’s possessed, but Shardlake thinks he’s a madman. Shardlake thinks a lot about insanity, as he also encounters patients of the Bethlem (Bedlam) Hospital in this book.

Once again he’s entangled with powerful men, but this time they’re on the same side. Archbishop Cranmer has reasons for wanting to keep the investigation from the king and he thinks Shardlake is the ideal man for the job. The king’s brothers-in-law, Edward and Thomas Seymour, are also involved.

Thanks to a sympathetic portrayal of him by Bernard Hepton in the TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII in 1970, I’ve always had a soft spot for Cranmer. Sansom portrays him as a compassionate and determined man, when he’s more often depicted as a weak man who gave way under pressure. There’s a particularly moving moment in the novel where Cranmer talks at length about the horror of being burned alive, a fate the real Cranmer eventually suffered.

The historical detail is, as always with Sansom, wonderful. There’s talk of setting up a hospital for the poor who have nowhere to go for care after the monasteries have been dissolved and the monks cast out. Shardlake and his assistant, Barak, make as much use of boats on the Thames as they do of their horses for moving around London. The streets are full of beggars and hawkers selling their wares.

Interestingly, Sansom only shows characters who have extreme religious beliefs. There are conservatives who want the English church to return to Rome and ‘hot-gospellers’ who are radical Protestants. There are even atheists. There are, however, no characters who show moderation and understanding in their beliefs. Perhaps that’s how things were at that time, but it feels odd.

My one criticism of Sansom would be that he’s not very good at action scenes. As in the previous three books there are moments when Shardlake’s life is in danger, but the reader barely has time to register the danger before it’s over.

As always, I can thoroughly recommend this episode in the Shardlake series.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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2019 Week Seventeen

The Goodreads reading the classics challenge is a challenge to read twelve classics in a year. So far I’ve managed four of my list and I’m on target. I now feel that I can start a book I’m not confident of finishing. That book is Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

My objective in doing the challenge this year has been to read books that have been on my shelves for years (or decades). My version of On the Origin of Species is the 1985 reprint of the 1982 Penguin Classics edition, so I can only assume I’ve had it since the mid-eighties. There’s a bookmark in the introduction, so I have tried to read it before and not got very far. It’s one of those books that people, me included, think you ‘ought’ to read, which is why I’m having another go at it. I’m not looking forward to it, because I’m not good at science. If I’m in a  pub quiz team with you, you can safely turn your back on me during the science round, because I won’t know any of the answers. I suspect, therefore, that a lot of the book will go over my head. If it does, or if I just can’t bear to read it, I have two stand-byes: The Interior Castle by Theresa of Avila and Four Comedies by Goldoni.

The book has an introduction by John Burrow, the editor, and Darwin’s glossary, but no notes.  The glossary defines words like prehensile and parasite, so I think I can at least be confident that the words whose meanings I don’t know will be included.

In other reading I’ve reached Revelation,  the fourth book in the Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom. Since I’ve read it before, it wasn’t much of a surprise when I remembered who the murderer is, even though I don’t know why he’s killing people. This time I’m enjoying coming across the clues that I missed the first time. I don’t know how I missed some of them, though. There’s a particular object that’s mentioned every time Shardlake enters the room where it’s kept. It’s not even mentioned with subtlety and I still didn’t notice years ago that it’s a huge clue to the identity of the killer. Even though it’s a long book and Shardlake is even more melancholy than ever, it’s an easy read.

 

Books read in challenge: 4

Books read in year: 18

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon

The Matthew Shardlake Books

I wrote at the weekend that I’m not a big fan of the Tudor era or of books set during that period, but I make an exception for the Matthew Shardlake books of C.J. Sansom. When the new book, Tombland, came out in October, I decided that I would reacquaint myself with the characters and events of the previous books before I started reading it.

I had a bit of a setback when I couldn’t find the first book in the series, Dissolution, but a search at the back of the top shelves with the aid of a ladder eventually solved that problem.

I was surprised when I finally dug it out to discover that it was first published in 2003. When I had all the books out I discovered that they’re getting longer as is the gap between their publication dates. Dissolution has 456 pages; Dark Fire (2004) has 501; Sovereign (2006) has 581; Revelation (2007) has 550;  Heartstone (2010) has 634; Lamentation (2015) has 656; and Tombland (2018) has 866 pages. To be fair, the gap between the last two is not as long as I thought it was.

For those of you who haven’t yet had the joy of discovering Matthew Shardlake, he’s a lawyer who gets involved in things he’d rather stay away from by, before his downfall, Thomas Cromwell, and later by Archbishop Cranmer. Usually this involves solving one or more murders, but there are usually other things going on that are of great importance to the king, Henry VIII. Shardlake has three major disadvantages for someone trying to make their way in Henry VIII’s England: he has a physical deformity; he’s a Protestant; and he finds it easy to make enemies in high places.

Much as I enjoy them, there are some things that happen in the books that stretch my credulity. When I was trying to stop a friend from revealing the plot of Tombland, we talked about the other books and both came up with the same event which we thought incredibly unlikely.  If you’ve read the books, you’re probably thinking about the same thing.

Now that I’ve uncovered Dissolution I shall be reading all the books and, despite their length, I doubt it will take me long.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon