'Tombland is more of a grand historical epic than a tightly packed whodunnit, like some of the earlier novels but 800 pages in Shardlake’s company will always fly by'. Shardlake works as a lawyer in the service of Henry's younger daughter, the Lady Elizabeth, in the novel Tombland (published in 2018), investigating a murder during the time of Kett's Rebellion in Norfolk. Not so the novels of CJ Sansom, whose magnificent books set in the reign of Henry VIII bring to life the sounds and smells of Tudor England.' Dark Fire won the 2005 Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger.Īfter Dark Fire was published, a Sunday Times review made this comment: 'Historical crime fiction is sometimes little more than a modern adventure in fancy dress. Shardlake works on commission initially from Thomas Cromwell in Dissolution and Dark Fire, then Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in Sovereign and Revelation, Queen Catherine Parr in Heartstone and Lamentation and finally Princess Elizabeth in Tombland. The series' main character is the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake, who is assisted in his adventures by Mark Poer, then Jack Barak and also Nicholas Overton. Sansom came to prominence with the Shardlake series, his historical mystery series set in the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century. He practised in Sussex as a lawyer for the disadvantaged, before leaving the legal profession to become a full-time writer. After working in a variety of jobs, he decided to retrain as a solicitor. Subsequently he was educated at the University of Birmingham, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. Sansom has written about the bullying he suffered there. He was born in Edinburgh and attended George Watson's College in that city, but left the school with no qualifications.

Christopher John Sansom (born 1952) is a British writer of historical crime novels, best known for his Matthew Shardlake series.

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