Heartstone: A Shardlake Novel 5

C. J. Sansom

Aug 2010 · Shardlake Book 5 · Mantle

About this ebook

Heartstone is C. J. Sansom's fifith spellbinding mystery in the Shardlake series.

"Murder, mystery and turbulent history are expertly twisted together in Sansom's fifth Tudor crime novel." Sunday Times

Summer, 1545. England is at war. Henry VIII's invasion of France has gone badly wrong, and a massive French fleet is preparing to sail across the Channel. As the English fleet gathers at Portsmouth, the country raises the largest militia army it has ever seen. The King has debased the currency to pay for the war, and England is in the grip of soaring inflation and economic crisis.

Meanwhile Matthew Shardlake is given an intriguing legal case by an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr. Asked to investigate claims of "monstrous wrongs" committed against a young ward of the court, which have already involved one mysterious death, Shardlake and his assistant Barak journey to Portsmouth. Once arrived, Shardlake and Barak find themselves in a city preparing to become a war zone; and Shardlake takes the opportunity to also investigate the mysterious past of Ellen Fettipace, a young woman incarcerated in the Bedlam.

The emerging mysteries around the young ward, and the events that destroyed Ellen's family nineteen years before, involve Shardlake in reunions both with an old friend and an old enemy close to the throne. Events will converge on board one of the King's great warships, primed for battle in Portsmouth harbour . . .

Ratings and reviews

C J Sansom once again has written an exciting and well researched book. I have lately been reading a number of historic mysteries but Sansom again is the pick of the bunch.

It is invigourating and spell binding of the days of Henry V111 both as a lawyer and as a citizen.

About the author

C J Sansom was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. He lives in Sussex. Sansom is the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of Winter in Madrid, and the Shardlake series: Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign and the number one bestseller Revelation.