The relationship between Shardlake and his right hand man Jack Barak has become strained due to the fact that Barak’s wife is expecting a child, and yet Shardlake needs Barak to go with him on his various investigations on behalf of Queen Catherine and others.

Heartstone is an intriguing read, which keeps you guessing until near the very end of the some 630 pages of the novel. He is much more prolific than Sansom, running several series of novels both medieval and from more ancient periods, at once, and his novels tend to be shorter and more vivid than those of Sansom’s. earlier this year, is likewise a historian, and someone who runs a school while at the same time writing a multitude of novels. Doherty, whom I had the pleasure of meeting and having a good meal with during my last stay in the U.K. Reviewers in the past have quite rightly compared Sansom’s novels with those of Paul Doherty (especially the Hugh Corbett series, which is however set during a different, much earlier period of English history during the reign of Edward I). That hardly matters if Sansom weren’t a very able novelist- but he is. Clearly, we have a case of art imitating some of the life of the novelist in this series. Sansom lives in Sussex stil where is no longer practices law, but rather is a full time novelist. Having worked at various jobs, and apparently being unsatisfied, he retained as a lawyer, much like his character Shardlake, and practiced in Sussex (where much of this novel is set) as an advocate for the poor (much like Shardlake in this and other novels).

Sansom is from Edinburgh, born in 1952 and educated at Birmingham where he took a PhD in history (and in these novels it certainly shows- there is a lot of interesting historical and social detail from the period about which he is writing). Perhaps a word at this juncture about the author would be in order. Strong prose makes Tudor England instantly accessible, and the clockwork plotting sustains deep interest throughout.” Both cases turn out to be extremely complex, and Shardlake, who puts justice above his personal interests, ends up with several murders to solve as well. On his own, he also probes the past of a Bedlam inmate, Ellen Fettiplace, who was institutionalized 20 years earlier after being raped. Soon after accepting this assignment, Shardlake is assaulted by a gang of thugs, who warn him to drop the matter. “In 1545, as a French fleet threatens invasion, the English queen, Catherine Parr, asks Shardlake to look into a matter for an old servant, whose son committed suicide shortly after filing a protest about the wardship of a boy the son had tutored.

Heartstone cj sansom summary