Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Excellent Tudor Mystery	Customer Rating:
What an excellent Tudor mystery - Sansom really brings Tudor life 'back to life'! If you enjoy grizzly murder mysteries with twists and turns then this is for you. It is well up to the standard of the previous 3 Shardlake novels and we can only hope the fourth one will not be too long in arriving! Read and enjoy - one to immerse onself in on a cold winter night!

Gripping!	Customer Rating:
Absolutely gripping, kept me guessing right up to the end. The style was absorbing and it gave the sense that you in the midst of the group as the events unfolded. A brilliant book - I hope this is not the end of Serjeant Shardlake! Buy it and get stuck in.

Not quite a revelation...

Customer Rating:

In this latest Matthew Shardlake novel, the sights, sounds and smells of Tudor London ring as true as ever, and the struggle between religious reformers and conservatives is persuasively drawn. Unfortunately, the main plot (serial killer on the loose) is irritatingly predictable. Even a semi-comatose reader will have worked out the connection between killings before Shardlake, and from then on it's a plodding murder-by-numbers until the damp squib of a conclusion. Perhaps the weakness of the plot would have been less obvious if the characters had been better developed. The coroner's main role sees to be to declare every thirty pages that the killer is possessed by the devil, while even Barak, a lively and resourceful presence in earlier novels, spends most of his time getting drunk and squabbling with his wife. The scenes at Lincoln's Inn and Bedlam are well handled, but overall there is a lack of ingenuity and no real plot twists. I'm hoping Shardlake's next outing will be more inspired.

Another great fun read

Customer Rating:

Another Matthew Shardlake novel this time set in 1543. The times are turbulent. Catherine Howard has been executed and Henry VIII is turning away from radical Protestantism but still wants no links with Rome. Different religious factions vie for supremacy and few people can feel completely safe. Although the bible is now translated into English laws are being passed to prevent women and the lower classes from reading it. Into this heady mix comes a serial killer who seems to be selecting his victims among people who have rejected radical Protestantism and killing them in accordance with the atrocities listed in Revelations. Believing there could be a link to Catherine Parr (who Henry is hoping to marry) Archbishop Cranmer enlists Matthew Shardlake to help find the killer without letting the general public (or the king) know what is afoot. This book is the usual great fun read that we have come to expect from the series. The characters from the earlier books (Jack Barak, Guy Malton and Bealnap) continue to be well developed. Matthew is a wonderful central character - thoughtful, wise and generous of spirit. The religious and political problems of the times are described in a way that doesn't disrupt the flow of the narrative. At the end everything is resolved. Catherine Parr marries Henry and seems to have a calming influence on him. Cranmer feels he is once again secure in his situation. But, of course, we know what happens to him when Mary comes to the throne......

Dreary dreary woe woe

Customer Rating:

While agreeing with all the three-star reviewers, I am afraid that I can't even rate Revelation as high as three stars. Like Zola fan "Nana" I stopped reading half-way through but returned a few days later in hopes that the action would pick up at the end. Shardlake has always had rousing climaxes. But no, the book just ground on and on through one red herring after another and finally here he is again with yet another broken heart. But lo! we are all set up for the next installment--the Catholic plot to destroy Queen Katherine Parr. (Why, by the way does Shardlake continually refer to her as Katherine Parr when at this point in her life she was still Lady Latimer? Ho hum, yet another clumsy anachronism that the editor let fly by.) Sansom started out his series with what looked to be a serious attempt to create a real, conflicted character living in a fascinating time period, following a well-thought-out trajectory. Now he has just become another book-a-year historical mysteries hack. What a waste.