Review of AUDIOBOOK Tombland – Book 7 of the Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom #BrainfluffAUDIOBOOKreview #Tomblandbookreview

This is another review I wrote in early 2021, before I went down with Covid-19 and became ill with Long Covid.

I have loved this historical series – see my reviews of Revelation and Lamentation, charting the adventures of hunchback lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, since he found himself caught up in a murder during the dissolution of the monasteries. I’m aware that this series is my ultimate benchmark when reading any historical murder mystery and was a bit shocked last year when I’d realised that I had let my reading of this series slip. So I have been catching up. I’m so very glad I did – for it would have been a crime to miss out on listening to this offering, which is the final book in the series.

BLURB: Spring, 1549. Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos…
The king, Edward VI, is eleven years old. His uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, rules as Protector. Radical Protestants are conducting all out war on the old religion, stirring discontent among the people. The Protector’s prolonged war with Scotland is proving a disastrous failure. Worst of all, the economy is in collapse, inflation rages and rebellion is stirring among the peasantry.

Since the old King’s death, Matthew Shardlake has been working as a lawyer in the service of Henry’s younger daughter, the Lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of the wife of John Boleyn, a distant Norfolk relation of Elizabeth’s mother – which could have political implications for Elizabeth – brings Shardlake and his young assistant Nicholas Overton to the summer assizes at Norwich. There they are reunited with Shardlake’s former assistant Jack Barak. The three find layers of mystery and danger surrounding the death of Edith Boleyn, as more murders are committed.

REVIEW: This is simply a tour de force – it’s also long at 866 pages, so it was a no-brainer to get hold of the audiobook and I’ve been listening to it for most of the month as I’ve been houseworking.

Shardlake is now forty-seven years old, white haired – and not at all happy with the state of England. Debasement of the coinage means that inflation is rising, which is hitting the poor, causing terrible hardship. And now, of course, there are no monasteries to provide any kind of buffer for those in dire straits. He is also aware that many of the gentry are illegally enclosing common land, causing yet more social problems and has lost his job working for the poor, as he has a very powerful enemy in the form of Sir Richard Rich.

However, he is still working for the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, and is summoned to investigate the bizarre and rather horrible murder of Lady Edith Boleyn. Lady Edith’s husband has been arrested for the murder and is shortly due to stand trial in Norwich, so Matthew and his assistant Nicholas travel there to see if they can get to the bottom of the case. They spend some time working on the case – and then things spiral out of control and Matthew and Nicholas, now accompanied by his former assistant Jack, are caught up in the astonishing events that then occur.

As my degree is in History, I had an inkling of what was coming – but I had no idea of the scale and sheer enormity of what went on. Several times, I sat down to listen, open-mouthed at what I was hearing – and a bit heartbroken as I also recalled the outcome… While Matthew Shardlake is a fictitious character, Sansom always ensures his stories are nested within actual historical events. And so I was fairly sure that what I was hearing actually happened – and I was right.

The last three hours of the book are devoted to an appendix of essays by Sansom, explaining the historical sources he used and explaining the actual events and how he used them. They are every bit as gripping as the actual story and I highly recommend that you listen or read them. I am awed by the scholarship and skill of the writing – once more I surfaced from this book profoundly grateful not to have been born in Tudor times. And with a lump in my throat – the final passage of the final essay is extremely moving. Very highly recommended if you enjoy reading good quality historical adventures.
10/10