TWO DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MATTHEW SHARDLAKE SERIES:ġ.

Sansom himself was 'Very Highly Commended' in the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library award, for the Shardlake series. He has also written Winter in Madrid, a thriller set in Spain in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.ĭark Fire won the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, awarded by the Crime Writers' Association (CWA). Sansom has been consulted on the series, which is in the final stages of negotiation. The rest of the Shardlake books are expected to follow. The BBC have commissioned an adaptation of Dissolution with the actor Kenneth Branagh set to star as Shardlake. Shardlake works on commission initially from Thomas Cromwell in Dissolution and Dark Fire and then Thomas Cranmer in Sovereign and Revelation. He came to prominence with his series set in the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century, whose main character is the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake. He practised for a while in Sussex as a lawyer for the disadvantaged, before quitting in order to work full-time as a writer. After working in a variety of jobs, he decided to retrain as a solicitor. He was born in 1952 and was educated at the University of Birmingham, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. And when Shardlake and Barak stumble upon a cache of secret documents which could threaten the Tudor throne, a chain of events unfolds that will lead to Shardlake facing the most terrifying fate of the age.Christopher John 'C.J.' Sansom is an English writer of crime novels.

But the murder of a York glazier involves Shardlake in deeper mysteries, connected not only to the prisoner in York Castle but to the royal family itself. As well as legal work processing local petitions to the King, Shardlake has reluctantly undertaken a special mission for Archbishop Cranmer-to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator who is to be returned to London for interrogation. Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant, Jack Barak. King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to attend an extravagant submission by his rebellious subjects in York.

Book 3 in the highly acclaimed Matthew Shardlake mystery series, now available from Vintage Canada.Īutumn, 1541.

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