Customer Reviews
Excellent Tudor Mystery - By: Gella, 15 Nov 2008 
What an excellent Tudor mystery - Sansom really brings Tudor life 'back to life'! If you enjoy grizzly murder mysteries with twists & turns then this is for you. It is well up to the standard of the previous 3 Shardlake novels & we can only hope the fourth one will not be too longin arriving! Read & enjoy - one to immerse onselfin on a cold winter night!
Gripping! - By: J. Cooper, 14 Nov 2008 Absolutely gripping, kept me guessing right up to the end.
The style was absorbing & it gave the sense that youin the midst of the group as the events unfolded.
A brilliant book - I hope this is not the end of Serjeant Shardlake!
Buy it & get stuck in.
Not quite a revelation... - By: Sideshow Bob, 10 Nov 2008 
In this latest Matthew Shardlake novel, the sights, sounds & smells of Tudor London ring as true as ever, & the struggle between religious reformers & conservatives is persuasively drawn. Unfortunately, the main plot (serial killer on the loose) is irritatingly predictable. Even a semi-comatose reader will have worked out the connection between killings before Shardlake, & from then on it's a plodding murder-by-numbers until the damp squib of a conclusion.
Perhaps the weakness of the plot would have been less obvious if the characters had been better developed. The coroner's main role sees to be to declare every thirty pages that the killer is possessed by the devil, while even Barak, a lively & resourceful presencein earlier novels, spends most of his time getting drunk & squabbling with his wife.
The scenes at Lincoln's Inn & Bedlam are well handled, but overall there is a lack of ingenuity & no real plot twists. I'm hoping Shardlake's next outing will be more inspired.
Another great fun read - By: Wynne Kelly, 05 Nov 2008 
Another Matthew Shardlake novel this time setin 1543. The times are turbulent. Catherine Howard has been executed & Henry VIII is turning away from radical Protestantism but still wants no links with Rome. Different religious factions vie for supremacy & few people can feel completely safe. Although the bible is now translated into English laws are being passed to prevent women & the lower classes from reading it. Into this heady mix comes a serial killer who seems to be selecting his victims among people who have rejected radical Protestantism & killing themin accordance with the atrocities listedin Revelations. Believing there could be a link to Catherine Parr (who Henry is hoping to marry) Archbishop Cranmer enlists Matthew Shardlake to help find the killer without letting the general public (or the king) know what is afoot.
This book is the usual great fun read that we have come to expect from the series. The characters from the earlier books (Jack Barak, Guy Malton & Bealnap) continue to be well developed. Matthew is a wonderful central character - thoughtful, wise & generous of spirit. The religious & political problems of the times are describedin a way that doesn't disrupt the flow of the narrative.
At the end everything is resolved. Catherine Parr marries Henry & seems to have a calming influence on him. Cranmer feels he is once again securein his situation. But, of course, we know what happens to him when Mary comes to the throne......
Dreary dreary woe woe - By: S. Porter, 29 Oct 2008 
While agreeing with all the three-star reviewers, I am afraid that I can't even rate Revelation as high as three stars. Like Zola fan "Nana" I stopped reading half-way through but returned a few days laterin hopes that the action would pick up at the end. Shardlake has always had rousing climaxes. But no, the book just ground on & on through one red herring after another & finally here he is again with yet another broken heart. But lo! we are all set up for the next installment--the Catholic plot to destroy Queen Katherine Parr. (Why, by the way does Shardlake continually refer to her as Katherine Parr when at this pointin her life she was still Lady Latimer? Ho hum, yet another clumsy anachronism that the editor let fly by.) Sansom started out his series with what looked to be a serious attempt to create a real, conflicted character livingin a fascinating time period, following a well-thought-out trajectory. Now he has just become another book-a-year historical mysteries hack. What a waste.
