Books & Poetry

When Aztec priests or Tudor lawyers become detectives and prowl mean streets, there is an element of fraud in the mix. The men and women of other times were not like us. They had ideas, as we do, that helped them survive in inhuman times and become complicit in the abominable, but we have different sins and condemn those to which we are not prone. Accordingly, any thriller set in the past needs a protagonist who is as much of our time as theirs.

The smart move is to show how, as they uncover mysteries and solve crimes, they move out of one mindset and towards another. CJ Sansom’s hunchback lawyer Shardlake used to be an enthusiast for the new religion of Protestantism, but has seen too many crimes committed in its name to feel that joyous rage any more. In this third Shardlake book, he and his clerk Barak go north, where King Henry VIII is on his progress through lands that rebelled and were ravaged. A simple legal job is complicated by the secret mission Archbishop Cranmer gives him: to ensure that a political prisoner lives long enough to be tortured in London. Conspiracies abound along with rumours of royal bastardy and adultery.

Sansom’s hero wins our respect and attention because, in an age where to pursue justice was to be half in love with painful death, he retains integrity, obstinacy and curiosity. This is an atmospheric thriller where velvet and silk hide putrescence, and beyond the grandeur of a Court lies a world where people rot alive or choke in deep mud. Sansom does a nice line in irony and savage humour, as well as the simple affections which keep people going in nightmarish times.