Book Review: Dissolution

My son and wife are asleep and all is well. I'm enjoying (between loads of visitors) the opportunity to do some reading. I need to balance my non-fiction with a good story, keeps my imagination going and are simply much easier to read. This is a good story.

It's essentially a murder mystery set in the reign of Henry VIII, and Matthew Shardlake, a hunchback lawyer is the riddle solver. It's well written with a great sense of history, you get a sense of a changing world as power is wrested from Rome and while scandal riddled monasteries are being closed it's not because of their heresy but because of their wealth.

It's well paced, well written and with good dialogue - all essential ingredients. I loved the medieval curses, 'God's teeth', 'God's nails' and the atmosphere created. There were some twists but nothing impossible or wholly unbelievable. So if you want a good holiday read, I'd recommend CJ Sansom's first Shardlake mystery, Dissolution.