SummaryIt is the winter of 1537 and England is divided into those
faithful to the Catholic Church and those loyal to the King
and the newly established Church of England. Thomas
Cromwell, Henry VIII's feared vicar-general, crusades
against the old Church with savage new laws, rigged trials,
and a vast network of informers. Queen Anne Boleyn has been
beheaded and monasteries are being dissolved-their
treasures pillaged and their lands eyed greedily by
courtiers and country gentry. But having put down one
people's rebellion, Cromwell fears another might topple the
realm. So, when one of his commissioners is murdered in the
monastery at Scarnsea on the south coast of England, he
enlists his fellow reformer, Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer
renowned as "the sharpest hunchback in the courts of
England," to head the inquiry. When Shardlake and his young clerk and protégé, Mark Poer,
arrive at Scarnsea, the two are greeted with thinly veiled
hostility and suspicion as their investigation quickly
uncovers evidence of sexual misconduct, embezzlement, and
treason. While the community of brothers is revealed to be
far less pious than they would seem, Shardlake himself is
shocked to discover truths about Cromwell that undermine
his own beliefs and threaten to cost him his faith, and
even his life. But when a novice is poisoned and a year-old
corpse dredged up from a nearby pond, Shardlake must act
quickly to prevent the killer from murdering again Exciting and elegant, Dissolution is a riveting historical
novel and a brilliant debut by a writer who is sure to
attract fans of Iain Pears, Ellis Peters, and Umberto Eco.
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