Sovereign, by CJ Sansom. Book review

Pan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-330-43608-3. 653 pages

This historical mystery is the third in the Shardlake series, following on from Dissolution (review) and Dark Fire (review). Sovereign is set in York and London in September-November 1541, with an epilogue in February 1542. King Henry VIII, Queen Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Rochford and Archbishop Cranmer are important secondary characters. All the main characters are fictional.

After the horrors recounted in Dark Fire, lawyer Matthew Shardlake has built up a modestly prosperous property law practice in London, with Jack Barak (formerly one of Thomas Cromwell’s henchmen) employed as his clerk. When Shardlake accepts a seemingly straightforward task from Archbishop Cranmer, he finds out too late that it also involves a political mission, escorting an important prisoner from York to London. Arriving in York, Shardlake and Barak find the city and region seething with resentment and hostility to the King. The destruction of the monasteries and the sale of their vast land holdings to absentee landlords, mainly in London, has not only wrecked the regional economy as the new landlords siphon the rents south, but also removed the safety net for those left destitute. Only a few months earlier a conspiracy against the King was discovered, throwing the London government into a panic and provoking King Henry to undertake a huge armed progress through the north of England. Shardlake’s prisoner was part of this conspiracy, and is to face torture in the Tower of London to force him to betray his associates. Shardlake, a humane man, is distressed by his mission and by the obvious injustice of the treatment of the North. And then a murder and a chance encounter bring Shardlake and Barak into possession of not one but two secrets perilously close to the throne. As events unfold, Shardlake uncovers a secret that threatens to plunge England into chaos and civil war – and he has powerful enemies at court who have a terrifying fate in store for him...

This third instalment in the Shardlake series is even darker than the first two. Corruption and cruelty are pervasive, and Shardlake finds out – personally, in one of the most harrowing sequences in the book – that honesty and justice do not necessarily provide any protection. His disillusion with both religion and royalty, developing through the first two novels as he witnessed abuses of power, is now complete. Shardlake is a decent man living in evil times, when integrity and a strong moral sense can carry a very high price. Several years ago when I reviewed Dissolution, I said ‘I will be interested to see how (if?) Shardlake and his principles manage to navigate the rest of Henry’s increasingly tyrannical reign’. In Sovereign, this is thrown into sharp relief.

The plot is suitably complex, with multiple strands that cut across one another. Some are connected and some are purely coincidental, providing ample scope for red herrings and false leads to keep the reader guessing. Whether the ancient rumours on which the main plot turns would really have been enough to threaten Henry VIII is hard to say. On the one hand, the dearth of alternative candidates – the nearest direct heir was a Cardinal in Rome – would surely have given pragmatists pause. On the other, Henry had made a great many enemies as a result of his marital antics, religious power-grab and increasingly tyrannical rule, and at least two serious rebellions had already been attempted (the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 and the conspiracy in 1541). Given Henry’s caprice and paranoia, it is entirely plausible that such rumours could have been extremely dangerous to those who happened upon them (regardless of whether there was actually a credible threat to Henry himself).

I was pleased to see Jack Barak back again, after his introduction in Dark Fire. This time he has a challenge of his own, a sparky young woman who works as a confectioner and seamstress for one of Queen Catherine’s ladies. It will be interesting to see if Barak is luckier in love than Shardlake has been so far – though I have to say I can’t really imagine Barak as a steady family man.

Like the previous two, the novel is very long and the pace is stately, even slow. This partly reflects Shardlake’s methodical nature; he seems to observe even attempts on his life in meticulous detail. The slow pace and the length allows plenty of space for historical detail about life at various levels of society under Henry’s rule.

A helpful historical note at the end outlines the background to the Progress, the northern rebellions and the rumours about the Tudor family tree, and there is a bibliography of selected further reading. A map at the front showing the layout of York in 1541 is helpful to follow the scenes in the city, and another map outlines the route of the Progress and Shardlake’s voyage from York to London for readers unfamiliar with English geography.

Dark historical mystery set against the cruelty and corruption of England during the later years of Henry VIII’s reign.

Dark Fire, by CJ Sansom. Book review.

Pan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-330-45078-2. 576 pages.

Set in London in the summer of 1540, Dark Fire is the second in the historical mystery series that began with Dissolution (reviewed here earlier). Historical figures Thomas Cromwell, the Duke of Norfolk and Richard Rich appear as secondary characters. All the main characters are fictional.

Matthew Shardlake has been practising quietly as a property lawyer in London for three years, since he investigated a series of murders at Scarnsea monastery for Cromwell (recounted in Dissolution).  The terrible events of that time cooled Shardlake’s ardour for religious reform, and he has no desire for any further involvement in high politics or religion; indeed, he is entertaining vague dreams about a peaceful country retirement. Against his better judgement, he is persuaded to take up a seemingly hopeless criminal case, defending the young niece of an old friend against a charge of brutal murder.  The girl refuses to plead, and Shardlake has no hope of saving her – until Cromwell intervenes with a stay of execution.  But Cromwell’s intervention has a price. He wants Shardlake to obtain the secret of Greek Fire, apparently recently rediscovered in the library of a dissolved monastery by a legal official and his alchemist brother.  Cromwell has promised a demonstration to the king. But when Shardlake arrives at their house, he finds the brothers brutally murdered and all their papers stolen.  Now Shardlake has to recover the secret from the murderers, and he has only twelve days to do it – if he can stay alive himself.

Dark Fire lives up to the high standard set by Dissolution. The search for Greek Fire is an ingenious mystery plot with plenty of twists and turns, false leads and dead ends, with a fair share of violent action. At the same time Shardlake is also trying to solve the mastery surrounding his friend’s niece and prove her innocent, and the two investigations intertwine, adding further complexity.

Like its predecessor, Dark Fire has a strong feeling of authenticity, conjuring up the fears and uncertainties raised by religious conflict, the sudden and ruthless destruction of the monasteries (and the consequent loss of the medical and social security services they provided, for all their faults), the rise of a money-grubbing clique obsessed with getting rich quick at everyone else’s expense, and the increasingly tyrannical rule of the ageing Henry VIII.  The squalor of Tudor London is well captured, from a rich noblewoman having to remind her lady-in-waiting not to trail her hand in the Thames during a boat trip because of the floating turds, to the gimcrack slums made of once-fine religious buildings by greedy landlords.

The most attractive feature of the novel for me was the character of Shardlake. Amidst this corrupt and semi-lawless world, Shardlake stands out as a humane and honest individual, prepared to use his legal training to stand up for the weak against the powerful to see justice done – insofar as there is justice to be had in a world where judges can be routinely bribed and the powerful do not hesitate to stoop to intimidation and murder.  Shardlake is a fully rounded character, with his fair share of flaws and foibles. He is sensitive about his hunchback, so much so that it becomes almost a form of vanity, and his humanity has blind spots that result in unintentional mistreatment of others.

I was pleased to see that Guy, an ex-monk from Scarnsea who appeared in Dissolution, makes a return in Dark Fire, now practising as a secular apothecary in London. Shardlake’s new assistant is another well-drawn character, a tough young bruiser called Jack Barak, working for Cromwell on various dodgy missions and temporarily seconded to Shardlake for the Greek Fire case.  Cocky and insolent on the surface, he is gradually revealed in more depth, and his painful history gives him insights that escape Shardlake. The ending suggests that the pairing may continue into further adventures, and it will be interesting to see how the two characters develop.

At well over 500 pages, the novel is very long, and in places I felt the pace slowed almost to a crawl, despite the constant reminders of the twelve-day deadline ticking down. This may be partly because I know a little about the history, so there was no suspense in the political subplot for me.  On the other hand, the length gives plenty of space for lots of historical detail about prisons, legal practice, living conditions, social customs and the economic and social consequences following on from the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

A helpful Historical Note outlines the political and religious background to the novel, and notes the fictional parts of the plot.  There is a useful map of London at the front, which helps in following the characters as they move around the city.

Ingenious mystery with an strong sense of time and place, set against the murderous political and religious conflicts of Henry VIII’s London.

Dissolution, by CJ Sansom. Book review

Pan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-330-45079-9. 443 pages.

Dissolution is a murder mystery set in London and the fictional monastery of Scarnsea on the south coast of England in 1537-1538, against the background of the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Thomas Cromwell is an important secondary character, and historical figures including Anne Boleyn and her supposed lover Mark Smeaton are important in the background. All the main characters are fictional.

Matthew Shardlake is a lawyer who occasionally undertakes commissions for Thomas Cromwell, the powerful and ruthless chief minister of Henry VIII. A keen reformer, Shardlake believes the monasteries are corrupt and supports Cromwell’s attempts to force the large monasteries into ‘voluntary’ surrender. When one of Cromwell’s commissioners, a brutal thug called Robin Singleton, is violently murdered while investigating the monastery of Scarnsea on the Sussex coast, Cromwell sends Shardlake to investigate. Snowbound in the isolated monastery, Shardlake finds that nothing is what it seems, and the threads of murder extend far beyond the monastery to encompass some of the highest in the land.

Dissolution is both a clever murder mystery and a vivid portrayal of the upheavals of the English Reformation. Inevitably, a murder set in an enclosed monastery is going to evoke The Name of the Rose – and unless I am much mistaken there’s a sly Name of the Rose joke in the text – but Dissolution is much more of a classic whodunit. Clues and red herrings abound to keep the reader guessing, and the solution is not obvious in advance, or at least it was not to me.

As well as the mystery puzzle, the sequence of subsequent events combine to produce a steadily building sense of menace, echoed by Shardlake’s increasing disquiet about the worth of the cause he is serving. This for me was one of the best features of the novel, its strong period sense. The upheavals in English society resulting from Henry VIII’s break with Rome and his marital entanglements are more than just a dramatic background, they are intrinsic to solving the mystery. Furthermore, the intellectual and social background is more than just atmosphere. Conflicts arise between the reformers’ view of the Catholic church as corrupt and the role of the Church as an international institution, a custodian of knowledge, a provider of education, a route of social mobility for intelligent men from modest backgrounds, and a social institution providing a degree of help for the destitute. Class conflicts also play a part, as far-reaching changes in the social order resulting in part from the Reformation bring a new type of opportunist to the fore. The overall tone is dark, derived not just from the violent events inherent in a murder mystery but also from a pervasive sense of fear and insecurity. If Cromwell and the King are ruthless enough and powerful enough to bring down the monasteries, with hundreds of years of accumulated tradition and wealth behind them, what hope for anyone?

Shardlake is a fully realised character, a very human mix of good and bad, attractive and unattractive qualities. He is intelligent and humane, a rational thinker, a follower of Erasmus and a keen reformer, believing that religious reform will improve the human condition. Yet he also unquestioningly accepts the class distinctions of his time and defends the resulting injustices, he is quick to take offence at any real or imagined reference to his disability (Shardlake has a hunchback), and it seems his zeal for reforming the monasteries may owe something to unpleasant childhood experiences in a cathedral school as well as to Erasmus’ ideals. Nevertheless, Shardlake is driven mainly by a search for truth and justice, and his disillusion as he is forced to recognise that many ‘reformers’ are more concerned with ego, greed, vanity and abuse of power, is both convincing and poignant. The other characters are clearly portrayed as individuals, though none has the depth of Shardlake. I will be interested to see how (if?) Shardlake and his principles manage to navigate the rest of Henry VIII’s increasingly tyrannical reign as it unfolds.

The novel is narrated throughout in first person by Shardlake, in straightforward modern prose (with a refreshing absence of expletives). It has something of a lawyer’s measured tones, and the pace is best described as stately. The tale is more of an intellectual puzzle against a menacing background than an action-packed thriller, and indeed Shardlake’s disability rather limits his opportunity to play the action hero (though I have to admire the author’s nerve for the Quasimodo scene!).

A map at the front of the book explains the layout of the monastery at Scarnsea, and will be helpful for readers who like to work out how the buildings connect to each other and who could have got to where. The senior monks are also listed at the front of the book, which may help readers keep track of the names as they are introduced, although I found I did not need to refer to it. A short and helpful Historical Note at the back summarises some of the underlying history.

Intelligent, dark murder mystery set against the well-realised historical background of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The Sixth Wife, by Suzannah Dunn. Book review

Edition reviewed: Harper Perennial 2007. ISBN: 978-0-00-722972-7. 298 pages.

Set in 1547–1548, The Sixth Wife is narrated by Catherine Duchess of Suffolk and covers the period after the death of Henry VIII, when his widow (the sixth and last wife) Katherine Parr married Thomas Seymour. All the main characters are historical figures, but the love triangle that forms the central premise of the novel is fictional.

Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk (“Cathy”) is the closest friend of Katherine Parr (“Kate”), sixth and last wife of King Henry VIII. Within months of Henry’s death, Kate marries the handsome and dashing Thomas Seymour, her old love. Outspoken and forthright, Cathy cannot understand what Kate sees in Thomas and is suspicious of his motives. But on a visit to help Kate with her first pregnancy, Cathy succumbs to Thomas Seymour’s allure, and soon a net of lies and betrayals threatens them all.

In her afterword titled Tudorspeak, Suzannah Dunn says “I don’t do historical fiction”. Having read The Sixth Wife, I would concur with that. This is not just because of the aggressively modern prose style, although I did find that somewhat distracting. It’s because I felt the story could have taken place at any time. The names attached to the three people in the love triangle happen to be historical figures, but the novel is driven mainly by the emotional turmoil resulting from an extramarital affair, and the emotions involved (lust, guilt at betraying a friend, fear of discovery, etc) apply just as readily now as in the sixteenth century. Possibly more so now, since religious guilt and the fear of sin don’t come into the novel much, and I would have expected them to play at least some significant role in any story from the sixteenth century, no matter how “modern” or “forward-thinking” the protagonist is supposed to be. Some of the narrative seemed overtly feminist in tone, such as the comment about women having made progress or suffered setbacks, and talk of women being “sold” as wards or wives. Furthermore, the author is candid in her epilogue (the equivalent of an Author’s Note) that the central love triangle is entirely fictional, and the plot twist that accommodates the actual rumours circulating at the time struck me as contrived.

The title is something of a misnomer, as the novel is narrated by Cathy and so only her feelings and thoughts are shown. Cathy speculates on Kate’s thoughts and feelings, and on Thomas’s motivations, but the reader is never shown what anyone else was really thinking or feeling. It’s far more about the Duchess of Suffolk than about Katherine Parr (but I suppose The Sixth Wife was the more obviously marketable title).

Cathy herself is a forthright no-nonsense woman who is not about to be pushed around by anybody, and her racy, gossipy narrative was quite attractive, once I got used to all the modern slang and convinced myself that it wasn’t a Dynasty script. Some of Cathy’s comments are sharply observed, such as the anger she feels when she realises that someone she loves is dying. The emotional toll of infidelity is also well drawn – the guilt of lying to a close friend, the self-delusion of pretending that the cheated wife won’t mind or won’t be hurt, the sense that the illicit affair is somehow not quite real. I found parts of the novel slightly reminiscent of some of Fay Weldon’s short stories. However, Cathy has only limited interest in exploring her own feelings, let alone those of others, and after a while I wanted to hear everyone else’s side of the story. The overall effect reminded me of being buttonholed in a bar by a glamorous but pushy acquaintance whose conversation isn’t quite as sparkling as she thinks it is.

Fictional extramarital love affair with some historical names attached.

Has anyone else read it?

The Boleyn Inheritance, by Philippa Gregory. Book review

Set in the turbulent world of the court of Henry VIII in 1539–1542, The Boleyn Inheritance covers wives number 4 and 5 in Henry’s collection, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard. All the main characters are historical.

In 1539, three contrasting women dream of going to the English court. Jane Boleyn, who gave evidence against her husband George Boleyn and his sister Queen Anne Boleyn that helped send them to the block, is haunted by their ghosts and desperate to get back to the excitement and intrigue of the court to rebuild her fortunes. Anne of Cleves yearns to make a good marriage to get away from her unpleasant mother and brother. Katherine Howard, a giddy teenager for whom the term ‘sex kitten’ could have been coined, wants to go to court so she can wear pretty dresses and dance with handsome boys. King Henry’s matrimonial desires give all three women their wish – but it is not long before political faction-fighting and the capricious whims of a tyrannical king threaten all their lives.

I’ve found some of Philippa Gregory’s novels disappointing. The paranormal hocus-pocus in The Queen’s Fool annoyed me, and at the (welcome) end of The Virgin’s Lover I could only conclude that all these silly, selfish, spiteful people were welcome to each other, and would Philip of Spain please hurry up with that Armada? So I skipped the next offering, and picked this one up with some caution. Well, I can’t speak for its historical accuracy or otherwise, though previous track record would make me cautious on that front, but at least it works as an enjoyable read.

The story is told by three first-person narrators, Jane Boleyn, Katherine Howard and Anne of Cleves. All three have voices so distinct that I never needed to look at the chapter headings to see who was speaking, and their contrasting characters were the great strength of the novel for me. Katherine Howard is exactly as I always imagined her, as pretty and playful and charming as a kitten and with about as much sense. Her narrative, with its comedy and vivacity, reminded me of a sixteenth-century Bridget Jones’s Diary. I half-expected the chapters to begin:

Dresses - 10
New dresses - 4 (vg)
Slobbery kisses from king - 3 (ugh)
Diamond necklaces from king after slobbery kisses - 3 (so not such a bad deal really)
Randy thoughts about Thomas Culpepper - 297

Watching this harmless girl dance heedlessly to her doom with not a thought in her head beyond boys and pretty dresses is pitiful, with the same sense of pointless waste as seeing a butterfly or a fluffy baby bird squashed on the road.

Jane Boleyn is a cynical commentator on the follies around her, believing herself such a woman of the world. Some of her asides have an attractive wry humour to them, such as her comment, “If she declares herself Dereham’s wife then she has not cuckolded the king, only Dereham, and since his head is on London Bridge he is in no position to complain.” Yet in her way she is as self-deluded as Katherine Howard, and naïve enough to put her trust in princes (or in her case, the Duke of Norfolk). Haunted by the deaths of her husband and sister-in-law, she tries to convince herself and those around her that she was blameless, that her part in their fate was unintentional – and indeed, she may well have been used then by those cleverer and more powerful than herself, just as she is being used again.

Anne of Cleves is a level-headed, courageous and quietly intelligent young woman. True, she was lucky that Henry found it easier to get rid of her by annulment rather than murder, but she had the good sense to grasp the opportunity for escape when it was offered and to accept undeserved humiliation as the price of staying alive. She probably came out the most unscathed of Henry’s wives, with her life and a private income, and like a sensible woman she made the best of it and made a reasonable life for herself. As she herself comments in the novel, “…it may be a better thing to be a single woman with a good income in one of the finest palaces in England than to be one of Henry’s frightened queens.”

King Henry is a Bluebeard-like ogre, probably a fairly accurate depiction of him in his later life. At the safe distance of 400+ years it’s possible to feel a little sorry for him, tormented by his paranoid suspicions and the physical pain of a revolting disease. On the spot, at the time, I should imagine he inspired mostly terror.

Prize for Top Villain, however, undoubtedly goes to the reptilian Duke of Norfolk, so remorseless and ruthless a schemer that you feel you ought to hiss every time he comes on stage. This remarkable political survivor, who successfully rode all the storms and tempests of Henry’s court, created a good many of them and always managed to get someone else’s neck on the block instead of his own, could have taught Machiavelli a thing or two.

There are some faintly icky aspects to the novel that might upset some readers. Katherine Howard is portrayed as only fourteen when she first caught the king’s eye. This is at the younger end of the likely range (the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives her date of birth as somewhere between 1518 and 1524), which makes Henry even more of a cradle-snatcher and casts Katherine’s first seducer, the music teacher Henry Mannox, in a decidedly unpleasant light, as she would have been only eleven at the time of his attentions. The dysfunctional relationship between Anne of Cleves and her brother Duke William is repeated rather heavily, and I was relieved that this aspect disappeared from the story early on when Anne left for England.

The novel is written in present tense throughout, which I find mildly irritating. It always has the effect of distancing me from the characters and events, and feels rather like watching a longwinded screenplay. Perhaps that’s the idea – maybe it makes it quicker to adapt next time Hollywood fancies another festival of pretty frocks, heaving bosoms, sex and murder (Shouldn’t think many Hollywood heart-throbs would be too thrilled at being offered the part of this Henry, though).

Sex, lies and death at the court of Henry VIII.