Sansom’s hero (and mine), the humpbacked lawyer Shardlake, is drawn into the intrigues, usually against his will, because of his intelligence and because of his neutrality in the never-ending political struggles.  He is rightfully frightened of becoming involved in those battles, where to end up on the weaker side means to end up dead — or imprisoned. But using his wits and his few trusted friends,including a Black ex-Monk and doctor and his right-hand man of Jewish ancestry, Shardlake stays alive and solves a few mysteries as well.

In Revelation, a serial killer is on the loose, a murderous maniac obsessed with the explicit and violent prophecies from the Book of Revelation.  I had never know that the Book of Revelation was contested as being a true gospel (word of God) by prominent Christians including John Calvin and Martin Luther.  My own research found that Thomas Jefferson called Revelation “merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.”

I always learn so much reading Sansom’s books. His books are full of many tasty (as well as some very unsavory) tidbits of English history and as a rigorous researcher, his facts line up with the history books and his stories don’t stray far from the believable.  His first novel, Dissolution,  was set at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, orchestrated and led by Cromwell.  Dark Fire revolves around a plot involving alchemists, a secret chemical weapon, and the slipping fate of Cromwell, as Henry VIII looks to protect himself and get rid of yet another wife.  Sovereign was incredibly gripping, with its plot line of hidden papers revealing the true genealogy of Henry VIII (the blood was not blue) and set amidst the Henry VIII’s grand march to York. Cromwell is long gone, executed like so many others, and Henry VIII is marching to York with his present queen, Catherine Howard, in an effort to quell the rebellious stirrings in the North of England.  The facts that Sansom weaves in are fascinating: the King traveled with an entourage of thousands, including horses, soldiers, noblemen, servants, livery, clergy, carpenters, entertainers, and privy diggers. In Revelation, Henry VIII is now wooing his final wife, Catherine Parr: she is a religious reformist (against the rituals of Rome) and reformers hope she will draw Henry back from the traditional tendencies he is drifting towards, after scorning them so soundly under Cromwell.

Sansom’s books are dense with detail and plot, rich with characters and landscape.  Shardlake ends up prevailing in the end (we are satisfied) but his victory of uncovering truth is marred, always, by the reality of how the truth must be concealed and by the bodies left on the floor: although Shardlake is able to untangle the mysteries presented to him and save some of those endangered by the political and religious swords swinging wildly from reformist to traditional, he can never save everyone.  And so the poor hunchback is saddled as literally as he is figuratively with the heavy double yoke of guilt for those he could not save and inadequacy for those he could not help.  In other words, he is a very human character; we sympathize with him, feel his pain and his sorrow, and we breathe of sigh of relief whenever he manages to save himself, one more time, from imminent torture or death.