With 'Sovereign,' historical whodunit series shows growth
Sovereign: A Matthew Shardlake Mystery
By C. J. Sansom
Viking, 592 pp., $25.95
The reign of Henry VIII is a treasure trove for historical fiction writers. With rival factions offering up their women as potential queens or paramours, Catholics and Protestants scrambling for rights (and, often, their lives), and a cantankerous monarch ruthless about consolidating control, nearly any conspiracy can be written into the royal history. Some are even probably accurate, and C.J. Sansom picks up on at least two of them in his latest historical whodunit, "Sovereign."
This hefty mystery, the third outing for Sansom's hunchbacked lawyer protagonist Matthew Shardlake, features a Henry toward the end of his reign. In ill health, and with his enemies gathering, the failing monarch has dragged the court on a royal progress up to York. A conspiracy has recently been put down in this northern English city, and the arrival of the king, as well as hundreds of courtiers, servants, hangers-on, and the like, is supposed to impress and frighten the rebellious area into submission. But the York residents are far from settled. Henry's restrictive laws have drained their wealth, and local sentiment still leans toward the older religious ways. Add in that his current (fifth) wife, Catherine Howard, is the subject of open speculation and rumor (she was months away from her beheading for adultery) and the air of distrust is palpable.
To this historic mix, Sansom adds a fictional murder to trip up, and nearly kill, his series hero. The sensible Shardlake, who had barely escaped the downfall of his mentor Thomas Cromwell in the previous book, "Dark Fire," has no desire to be dragged to the damp, unfriendly city. But the death of his father has left him in debt, as well as more vulnerable than he realizes to barbs from his conscience and his king. When the lawyer accepts a well-paid commission to accompany a presumed traitor from York back to the Tower of London, where he will be tortured, this vulnerability will soften Shardlake's usually sharp wits. And the touchy friendships found on the progress -- from a lovely young servant and an aging bookish lawyer -- may cause more trouble than they ease.
The central crime seems, at first, both simple and unrelated: A glazier, charged with removing the now-sacrilegious stained glass from a York church, has fallen to his death. But when Shardlake recovers possibly treasonous papers from the dead man's home, he realizes that the fall was no accident. As he sets out to investigate, Shardlake's own life is threatened in novel and opportunistic ways: A cooking spit flies through the air like a spear and a bear, brought along to entertain the king, is loosed from its cage, for some believable period action. Add in the usual political intrigue, including the return of an old enemy, Sir Richard Rich, and the 592 pages of this thick tome trip along nicely.
As this series progresses, not only has the size of this author's books grown, so has his plotting. Sansom's writing remains the straightforward, readable prose that distinguished his first two mysteries, with the occasional period word ("wembly" for "wobbly," for example) lending a Tudor authenticity. And some smaller plot devices are obvious: When Shardlake notices the trimming of rose bushes, for example, readers can assume thorns will show up where they shouldn't. But in general his story lines have increased in depth as not only does Shardlake prove the glazier's death to be a murder, but its investigation leads the lawyer into other crimes. Before long, the beleaguered lawyer will be involved with Yorkist traitors, the royal family, and his own troubled past in that engaging mix of history and fiction that Sansom has made his own.
Clea Simon is a freelance writer and the author of "Cattery Row." 