In the winter, Scarnsea is a hard place to break into, but the monks and monastery staff would like to think the murderer came from outside. A great read and highly recommended if like me you love crime / thrillers set in an historical context. It’s a wonderful who-dunnit with a colourful cast of very different characters, well identified in welcome, subtle ways by Sansom as they appear and reappear in the story. This is a great story filled with intrigue, political machinations and realpolitik being conducted under the guise of religion. This book brilliantly weaves the true account of events with fiction whilst introducing us to new characters, such as Matthew Shardlake.

When we find out who did what and why, I found one or two of the resolutions hard to believe, and something of an anti-climax.Shardlake makes his way to Scarnsea, in hopes that this will be a quick legal matter, but soon discovers that there is more to the monastery than meets the eye. We are introduced to Matthew Shardlake, a hunchback lawyer, who is sent to a monastery that is being dissolved - Cromwell's commissioner has been murdered and Shardlake must discover the killer. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. The story seems accurate and informative as well as entertaining, I enjoyed the investigative process, and I didn’t guess the perpetrator.

Anne Boleyn was a true Eve, nearly bringing a kingdom down with her feminine wiles and her “progressive” religious ideas. He [Thomas Cromwell] was holding up a casket [small box] and studying the contents with a contemptuous frown, his wide, narrow-lipped mouth down-turned above his lantern chin. Set in 1537 during the dissolution of the monasteries, the book follows the lawyer Shardlake in his attempts to solve the murder of one of Thomas Cromwell's commissioners in the monastery at the fictional town of Scarnsea on the south coast of England. I mean, imagine how different the country would be today if King Henry VIII never broke with Rome, and with the Pope.

When Cromwell’s commissioner to Scarnsea Robert Singleton is brutally murdered, Shardlake charged with finding the murderer heads there with his assistant Mark Poer, only to find that things are very very murky in the monastery though on the surface, everything seems fine. Under overwhelming time and secrecy pressure imposed by Cromwell, Shardlake begins a long set of interviews and immerses himself in the life of the monastery. Dissolution is not just a fascinating detective story, but a convincing portrait of a turbulent period. The seventh book in the series will be out in about a month, and I am very much looking forward to reading that. Choose one word, as quickly as possible, to describe each of the three main characters: Shardlake, Mark Poer, and Alice.

Shardlake himself, I felt from the beginning came across as too idealistic and naïve compared to the later books, and while Mark Poer was an interesting enough character, “seeing” things much more clearly in some ways than Shardlake, having become used to Jack Barrack from the later titles, somehow, one doesn’t get the same kind of feeling about him.

Interested in English history and lover of mystery novels I bought this book and I was not disappointed. Even before the previous Commissioner, Robin Singleton, had his head removed by some unfriendly sort during his stay there, a monastery in this period was far from safe. As someone with no religious affiliation or belief, it's sometimes hard to imagine how important the specifics of worship can be to an individual or group; what doesn't surprise is the ways in which the machinery of power or domineering individuals can make such strong convictions useful.