Matthew Shardlake, the marvelous hunchbacked 16th-century attorney who first appeared in Sansom's Dissolution, returns in this spellbinding Tudor-era tale of murder, conspiracy and betrayal. Shardlake normally handles property cases and the occasional dangerous mission for Lord Thomas Cromwell, the king's high counselor. Now he is engaged to defend a young woman accused of a curious murder, and the case seems hopeless. The girl refuses to speak and, under English law, unless she offers a plea in court she will be slowly crushed to death.
The Body is a study of jealousy. From the moment when Henry Bishop a middle aged hairdresser, sees a stranger gazing up at his wife's bathroom window, he is obsessed by a belief that she is unfaithful to him. Feeding on a few slight clues — &n entry in a diary, a whiff of tobacco in an empty room — this obsession finally blazes up into the .very ecstasy of hate. Its theme is admirably suited to Mr Sansom's talent for revealing the normal world as it appears in the distorting mirror of a mind under abnormal stress.
In March 1543, while London buzzes about Henry VIII's campaign to win newly widowed Lady Catherine Parr for his sixth wife, hunchbacked barrister Matthew Shardlake has grimmer matters on his mind in Sansom's gripping fourth Tudor historical (after 2007's Sovereign). Not only has his close friend and colleague Roger Elliard been savagely murdered but Shardlake finds himself assigned the incendiary case of a young religious fanatic committed to Bedlam.
Sansom's engrossing third historical featuring Matthew Shardlake (after 2005's Dark Fire) finds the hunchbacked barrister at the vortex of strife-torn Tudor England in the rainy autumn of 1541. Northern Britain anxiously awaits the arrival of the Great Progress taking Henry VIII and an entourage of thousands toward York to quell a fresh rebellion.
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 Rose set 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.
