Dissolution (The Shardlake series, 1)

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Do you think it is the most important era of English history, a time that lends itself particularly well to drama, or a combination of these things? This has created a febrile atmosphere of religious unrest with Catholics being hunted down and plentiful executions. The beginning was fantastic, establishing the characters, power dynamics and setting, and the initial introduction to our mystery. The tensions in the country are high between those loyal to King Henry and those to the Catholic Church. I didn’t think someone as young and emotional as Alice could ever be interested in Shardlake, and I see him as the sort of detective, like Inspector Morse, who doesn’t have a lot of success with the ladies—I don’t mean because of his hump, which would not have been that uncommon in England then—more his lack of self-esteem.

Shardlake is a commissioner sent, by Thomas Cromwell, to investigate his predecessor’s murder at a monastery. The Dissolution with the Catholic Church changed the face of England forever along with its sequential history. There is some historic religious connection to past centuries, and influence from the Protestant Reformation, but I’d rather get back to the mystery! I will admit that “Dissolution” took me a while to get into, despite the fact that its setting and subject matter are right up my alley.The historical background is phenomenal in this book (the author really knows his stuff) and the murder mystery ain’t bad. The character of Mathew Sharldlake is charming but will probably need to be developed a little more (I assume this will happen in later books?

It seems a universal rule in this world that people will always look for victims and scapegoats, does it not? After one of Cromwell's commissioners is brutally murdered, Matthew Shardlake is drawn into an investigation that becomes darker than he could have ever imagined . It is 1537, Henry VIII has declared himself head of the church of England and the process of dissolving all the monasteries in the country, now the larger and wealthier ones (after some smaller ones earlier on) is on, and Cromwell has appointed commissioners to see to it that this is accomplished.

People used the new laws to settle old grievances, turning their enemies in for Catholic devotion that reminds me of neighbors turning on neighbors in Germany under the Third Reich. I like to be able to feel cleverer than the protagonist and the author doesn’t provide me with that opportunity. He soon discovers that the monastery keeps two sets of books and the missing blue book may be the very thing he needs to find to unmask at least one of the killers. If so, was it authentic or do you think Alice manufactured a faux physical attraction to manipulate Shardlake? The slow teasing out of their drives and motivations was executed brilliantly, and this book really showed itself to be one of the best at handling mystery that I have had the pleasure to read.