The Tudor sleuth who’s cracked the secret of suspense

Some reviewers are slick and quick. Rapid readers, they remember everything, take no notes, quote at will. I’m the plodding sort, making more notes than I can ever use and underlining so many quotes that, if I put them all in, it would constitute a republication of the book.

But I’ve not done this with Lamentation, the sixth novel in C.J. Sansom’s Tudor crime series featuring his credible and likeable hero, the lawyer Matthew Shardlake. I intended to proceed as normal, but so engrossing is the tale that I didn’t pause long enough to take a note. Even when judged by the high standards of the earlier Shardlake novels, this one stands out — not least because it successfully maintains suspense for over 600 pages, which is going it a bit.

Shardlake is a middle-aged, hunchbacked member of Lincoln’s Inn who would like to marry but has never found a wife. His practice is mostly property law, but he has contacts on the fringes of the royal court and occasionally the great figures there —ranging from Thomas Cromwell in the earlier novels to Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth and last queen, in this — call upon his services. He is invariably reluctant, since such requests are always dangerous, leading him into troubled political waters with hidden currents, strong and deep.

This story is set entirely in Tudor London during the final months of Henry’s reign. The ailing king is becoming ever more arbitrary and unpredictable, favouring the reformers (Protestants) one month, the traditionalists (Catholics) the next, rejecting papal authority while secretly parleying with the Pope’s emissary, encouraging reform while publicly burning radicals and any who deny the Real Presence in the Mass. As several of Shardlake’s associates discover, the only safe answer to questions about your religious belief is to say you worship as the king decrees.