Philobiblon

Everything we know about the morality and behaviour of Tudor times suggests that we would find the character of many of the people then — certainly those battling their way in the cutthroat world of the royal court — unattractive. Yet CJ Samson, in creating his detective character, the hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake, has found a way around this problem. The man whose deformity is often openly mocked and even causes superstitious fear — the credible genuinely believe that seeing a person so deformed will cause bad luck — is sensitive to other’s pain. He also cannot react to difficult and dangerous situations by whipping out his sword, as your average Tudor man would have done – in fact is believably a lot more like us than almost any other Tudor character might be.

Master Shardlake makes his third appearance in a novel simply entitled Sovereign – appropriately enough, since while the massive figure of Henry VIII hovered menacingly in the background in the first two novels, here he is centre stage, dominating the thoughts of everyone, even in his absence, as he leads the great Progress of the North of 1541. Still seeking to avoid becoming entangled in the intrigues of the court, Master Shardlake is lured into a delicate mission by Archbishop Cranmer. He is to protect a valuable prisoner, who knows secrets that could shake the foundations of the throne, until that prisoner can be taken to London for the hideous but calculated ministrations of the professional torturers in the Tower of London.

A man who can’t even face watching a bear-baiting, Master Shardlake is troubled by this, as he also tries to deal with the recent death of his father. Sansom develops the lawyer’s character beautifully, although he’s less sure in his handling of female characters. Here Tamasin, a young woman of the court, an orphan having to look out for herself, is central to the plot – becoming entangled, it seems to the point of marriage, with Master Shardlake’s rough clerk and oft-time bodyguard, Barak. The lawyer is understandable uncertain about her, but as we only ever see her from his point of view, she never really develops.

The physical reality of early modern life – the clothes, the smell, the severed heads on spikes above town walls – are, however, all beautifully laid out, and the detailed research behind the novel is evident in the accounts of the run-down, angry city of York — still seething after the “Pilgrimage of Grace” rebellion a few years before.

The politics of the court, its intrigues and maneouvres, are also, so far as this reader can tell, closely based on historical reality, where it is known, and the fictional additions are well-crafted. We know, of course, what is going to happen to the king’s young fifth wife, Catherine Howard, but that adds to, rather than detracts from, the suspense. And the traditional final twist at the end of the novel is beautifully done.

I complained when I reviewed the second novel in the series, Dark Fire, that Sansom’s writing style sometimes grated, and here it has definitely improved. Fewer individual words grate, and while sometimes the research shines through just a little too much, it now feels more integrated into the story.

It is perhaps just a little too early to start talking about Sansom in the same breath as the great historical novelist Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters), but he is certainly heading in that direction. But while Peters’ Brother Cadfael, created in the 20th century, lived in a neat, just-desserts world, Master Shardlake’s is altogether messier – moral and physically – suiting today’s tastes.

Literary types like to dismiss genre fiction as pure formula, yet judging by the number of published novels that are near- (or all too frequently far-) misses, a detective novel is as difficult to write well as any other.

I was musing on this after reading C.J. Sansom’s Dark Fire, the second in what looks likely to be a long series featuring a hunchback lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, who’s navigating the hazardous political/religious waters of the later years of Henry VIII’s reign with Cromwell (no the other one) as his patron.

Having enjoyed the first in the series, Dissolution, I was keen to pick up this one, but finished it feeling vaguely dissatisfied (although I did read it through in one session, so it was good enough).

Analysing why, I decided that Sansom has got it 75 per cent right. The characters are excellent – Matthew is an interesting, complex central figure, with believable sensitivities about his hunchback and a plausible back story, and there are colourful minor characters, particularly the apothecary Moor who is his best friend and, in this second book, an important character.

The historical setting is, so far as I can tell, well researched, and it only occasionally intrudes in a way that suggests the author couldn’t resist including this detail, without literary reason.

The plots too fairly rolic along, in a way that demands you keep reading, and have the sort of neatness and fairness that fiction demands and real life almost never delivers. (So in Dark Fire an orphan girl who is accused of murder is kept safe and finally, rightly freed, when anyone who knows anything about “justice” of the time knows she wouldn’t have had a hope. But fair enough: our 21st-century minds demand right triumph, in a way that would have been seen as hopelessly naive in the 16th century.)

What isn’t right is the language, and the detail of the writing. “Lay off the weather!” I feel like yelling at Sansom at regular intervals. And he hasn’t really got the “show not tell” rule. e.g. in Dissolution: “As I passed down Ludgate Hill, I noticed a stall brimming with apples and pears and, feeling hungry, dismounted to buy some.”. Drop the “feeling hungry”, please. Why else would you?

Overall Sansom does a pretty good job of avoiding anachronism, while using basically modern language (I’m not a great fan of the “thee, thou” school of historical writing – you can’t write “in period” because we wouldn’t understand it, and using such dressing is like those home improvement shows that turn a suburban dining room into a medieval hall with a bit of plywood and paint.)

But it is funny how odd words grate: Matthew refers sometimes to his “condition”, sometimes others refer to him as a “cripple”, both of which seem fair enough, but sometimes he is thinking of his “disability” – I’m not sure exactly why, but this just seems too modern a word.

Reading such fiction makes you realise how little we really know about the details of historical life. I’d question, although I can’t cite sources why, whether Matthew and his sidekick in the first novel would really have changed into nightshirts to sleep (which becomes significant in the plot) – surely, particularly when staying at a rough country inn, they would have slept in their day clothes.

Then Matthew in Dark Fire is forever saddling his horse to ride a mile or so across London. I think of Pepys, rather later of course, but he used to walk down to Rochester, and all across London. Given the difficulty of finding somewhere for the horse at the other end would not Matthew have walked?

Still, will I buy the next in the series? Probably.