Dissolution
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4.2 • 135 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES ON DISNEY+ STARRING SEAN BEAN
In an age of treachery and turmoil, brutal murder brings the ultimate test of faith ...
"A first-rate murder mystery" Independent on Sunday
"Shardlake is a character to treasure" Sunday Times
"Terrific. Historical fiction at its finest" Peter Robinson
Henry VIII has proclaimed himself Supreme Head of the Church and the country is waking up to savage new laws, rigged trials and the greatest network of informers ever seen. Under the order of Thomas Cromwell, a team of commissioners is sent through the country to investigate the monasteries. There can only be one outcome: the monasteries are to be dissolved.
But on the Sussex coast, at the monastery of Scarnsea, events have spiralled out of control. Cromwell's Commissioner Robin Singleton, has been found dead, his head severed from his body. His horrific murder is accompanied by equally sinister acts of sacrilege - a black cockerel sacrificed on the alter, and the disappearance of Scarnsea's Great Relic. Dr Matthew Shardlake, lawyer and long-time supporter of Reform, has been sent by Cromwell into this atmosphere of treachery and death. But Shardlake's investigation soon forces him to question everything he hears, and everything that he intrinsically believes ...
Dissolution is the first in the phenomenal Shardlake series by bestselling author C. J. Sansom, followed by Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone and Lamentation.
PRAISE FOR SHARDLAKE TV SERIES:
"Viewers who enjoy historical fiction and ecclesiastical murdering - Wolf Hall, The Cadfael Chronicles or The Name of the Rose - should make a beeline for this cloak-and-dagger crime drama, set during the dissolution of the monasteries. Based on the Shardlake novels by CJ Sansom" Sunday Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Murders on the grounds of a monastery, 16th-century intrigue, an unconventional sleuth readers might wonder if this is a knock-off Name of the Roseset two centuries later, but Sansom's debut is a compelling historical mystery in its own right, with fewer pyrotechnics and plenty of period detail. It is 1537; the English Reformation is in full swing; and Lord Thomas Cromwell, King Henry VIII's vicar-general, is busy shutting down papist institutions. When one of his commissioners is beheaded at a remote Benedictine monastery, Cromwell dispatches a second emissary, hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake, to investigate the murder. What Shardlake and his companion, eager young Mark Poer, discover is a quietly bubbling cesspool of corruption, lust and avarice. The scope of the investigation quickly expands when a novice is poisoned and Shardlake finds the remains of a girl who served the monks in the monastery pond. Shardlake presses on by testing the alibis of the various corrupt monks, but Poer's objectivity is compromised when he becomes involved with the girl's successor, a bright, attractive woman named Alice Fewterer. As the investigation unfolds, Shardlake survives a murder attempt, and finally returns to London to tie his findings to higher-level intrigue. Sansom paints a vivid picture of the corruption that plagued England during the reign of Henry VIII, and the wry, rueful Shardlake is a memorable protagonist, a compassionate man committed to Cromwell's reforms, but increasingly doubtful of the motives of his fellow reformers. With this cunningly plotted and darkly atmospheric effort, Sansom proves himself to be a promising newcomer.
