Several minor characters appear as the mystery unfolds. Once Sansom takes us to the monastery, we meet a host of main characters: Abbot Fabian, Prior Mortimus, Brothers Guy, Edwig and Gabriel, Alice who serves in the infirmary, Brother Bugge who guards the monastery entrance, Brother Jerome who was racked in the tower of London. I quickly identified with Matthew Shardlake, a man of influence who suffers the stares and jeers of others because he is a hunchback, and Mark Poer, a promising young man with a troubled past. He sprinkles it with phrases of the Tudor period and references to events of the day, but rarely confuses the reader. Dialogue drives the action of this novel from the very beginning, while narrative situates us in time (just after the death of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour) and circumstance (the dismantling of Catholic monasteries). (1) Superb writing – Sansom’s prose is an easy blend of narrative and dialogue. Shardlake and his young protege, Mark Poer, uncover evidence of sexual misconduct, embezzlement, and treason, but when two other murders are committed, they must move quickly to prevent the killer from striking again. When a royal commissioner is murdered in the monastery of Scarsea, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s feared vicar general summons fellow reformer Matthew Shardlake to lead an inquiry. Sansom, the first in his series about Matthew Shardlake. To do so, I’ve chosen Dissolution by C.J. Time to test another top author against those ingredients.

A few months ago, I developed a concept of ten essential ingredients for favourite historical fiction.

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom