Lamentation by C.J. Sansom, book review: Shardlake shines in this expertly executed tale

Of the making of books about Henry VIII there is no end – and CJ Sansom’s fans must hope this will be true for the adventures of his hunchback Tudor lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, who was a protégé of Thomas Cromwell in the early books and, though a fictional character, maintains as much of a following in the murder mystery field as Hilary Mantel’s flawed hero in her acclaimed series.

This is his sixth outing, not exactly one for each wife but near enough, where Catherine Parr very comes within a whisker of the axe – or worse, as the opening chapter describing the burning of her associate, Anne Askew, horribly demonstrates.

Queen Catherine is heavily implicated in heresy in an era when the slightest deviation from the King’s pronouncements on religion could mean death – and no one knew what the vacillating royal mind would pronounce next. Moderate citizens, like Shardlake, are desperately struggling to keep their balance between extremes of fervour. They are also trying to work out the royal succession after the diseased monarch finally collapses into the grave. Sansom brilliantly conveys the uncertainty of the time when a frail young prince would ascend the throne with different factions fighting for regency.

Shardlake is presented with an appeal for help from the Queen herself, who has unwisely committed her religious opinions to paper. This compromising document has been stolen, and Shardlake uncovers a series of murders, beginning with that of a printer implicated in the publication of the dangerous manuscript. Sansom has the gift of plunging us into the different worlds of the period: the premises of a struggling young printer whose only asset is his press, a dangerous possession when this newfangled invention could implicate the printer in treason and heresy.

Shardlake finds himself also at court, surrounded by luxuries and perils as extreme as those of the London docklands. Here, amid the royal entourage, he meets one William Cecil, already a supreme manipulator, and the young sister of the heir to the throne, the clear-minded Princess Elizabeth, evidently prepared to make her own way forward. There is a sadness about this novel which suggests that Shardlake’s own world is breaking up – his great companion, Barak, who provides the physical strength the disabled lawyer lacks, gets into fearful straits – but it ends on a hopeful note for the many followers of this splendid series, which combines the imaginative insights of fiction with scholarly research. We see Shardlake carried safely downriver to join the budding court of the young Elizabeth, auguring well for his future.

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