By Paul Carrier
By 1545, though, Catherine is the queen of England, and Shardlake has agreed to do her a favor by representing a former servant, Bess Calfhill. Her son, Michael Calfhill, allegedly committed suicide after publicly accusing a wealthy merchant of mistreating his young ward, Hugh Curteys. But how Michael really died, and what happened to Hugh, remain unclear.
Shardlake is a reflective and compassionate bachelor who just wants to practice law away from the dangerous machinations of the rich and powerful. In this fifth installment of C. J. Sansom’s popular mystery series, he once again finds himself drawn into a circle he would rather avoid.
Michael Calfhill began tutoring Hugh and his sister Emma when they still lived with their parents. When both parents died, Sir Nicholas Hobbey obtained guardianship of the two youngsters and Michael joined them in their new household, only to be told that his services were no longer needed after Emma, too, died.
Visiting Hugh one last time following his dismissal, Michael saw something so disturbing that it prompted him to petition the court to rescind Hobbey’s guardianship. Michael’s petition accuses Hobbey of committing “monstrous wrongs” against Hugh, but before the court can take up the case, Michael is found dead, hanging from a roof beam in his room.
Bess refuses to accept the official finding that her son’s death was a suicide. And she remains convinced that he would not have alleged wrongdoing by Hobbey unless he knew it to be true. So Shardlake and his trustworthy clerk, Jack Barak, head south to Hampshire, where Hugh lives with the Hobbeys, in search of the truth.
To Shardlake’s surprise, this case proves to be related to one in which Shardlake is trying to determine how Ellen Fettiplace, an intelligent but deeply troubled woman, ended up in the Bedlam, a London hospital for the mentally ill. There is no court record indicating that she was committed for insanity, yet someone is paying to keep her at the hospital, which she refuses to leave.
Shardlake believes Ellen was raped before she was hospitalized, and that she may have witnessed a murder at about the same time as well. But filling in the blanks proves to be a difficult task.
Sansom’s Shardlake series is appealing because of its well-drawn, nuanced characters and page-turning pace. In Heartstone, for example, what seems like a closing chapter proves to be anything but, as the action builds to a higher, more fevered, pitch when the reader least expects it.
The author gets high marks for successfully imagining the look and feel of Tudor England, with its ironclad class structure, corrupt legal system, and ever-present threat of violence. In Matthew Shardlake, Sansom has created a believable, and extremely likable, 16th-century detective. Shardlake is all the more appealing because he sometimes makes erroneous assumptions that leave him stumbling down blind alleys. Our hero is no superhero.
The sense of foreboding that exists throughout the series is all the stronger in Heartstone. Even as Shardlake noses about, the king is assembling troops and ships at Portsmouth to repel an imminent invasion by a French armada. While bravado is rampant across the land, many fear that England, unprepared, is vulnerable to her powerful enemies.
In one of the novel’s many fine examples of evocative writing, Shardlake, as narrator, meticulously describes his visit aboard one of the large royal warships that are anchored at Portsmouth. The reader is left with the distinct impression that the Mary Rose is an awesome weapon, simultaneously beautiful and terrifying.
Visiting Hugh one last time following his dismissal, Michael saw something so disturbing that it prompted him to petition the court to rescind Hobbey’s guardianship. Michael’s petition accuses Hobbey of committing “monstrous wrongs” against Hugh, but before the court can take up the case, Michael is found dead, hanging from a roof beam in his room.
Bess refuses to accept the official finding that her son’s death was a suicide. And she remains convinced that he would not have alleged wrongdoing by Hobbey unless he knew it to be true. So Shardlake and his trustworthy clerk, Jack Barak, head south to Hampshire, where Hugh lives with the Hobbeys, in search of the truth.
To Shardlake’s surprise, this case proves to be related to one in which Shardlake is trying to determine how Ellen Fettiplace, an intelligent but deeply troubled woman, ended up in the Bedlam, a London hospital for the mentally ill. There is no court record indicating that she was committed for insanity, yet someone is paying to keep her at the hospital, which she refuses to leave.
Shardlake believes Ellen was raped before she was hospitalized, and that she may have witnessed a murder at about the same time as well. But filling in the blanks proves to be a difficult task.
Sansom’s Shardlake series is appealing because of its well-drawn, nuanced characters and page-turning pace. In Heartstone, for example, what seems like a closing chapter proves to be anything but, as the action builds to a higher, more fevered, pitch when the reader least expects it.
The author gets high marks for successfully imagining the look and feel of Tudor England, with its ironclad class structure, corrupt legal system, and ever-present threat of violence. In Matthew Shardlake, Sansom has created a believable, and extremely likable, 16th-century detective. Shardlake is all the more appealing because he sometimes makes erroneous assumptions that leave him stumbling down blind alleys. Our hero is no superhero.
The sense of foreboding that exists throughout the series is all the stronger in Heartstone. Even as Shardlake noses about, the king is assembling troops and ships at Portsmouth to repel an imminent invasion by a French armada. While bravado is rampant across the land, many fear that England, unprepared, is vulnerable to her powerful enemies.
In one of the novel’s many fine examples of evocative writing, Shardlake, as narrator, meticulously describes his visit aboard one of the large royal warships that are anchored at Portsmouth. The reader is left with the distinct impression that the Mary Rose is an awesome weapon, simultaneously beautiful and terrifying.
