Where There Are Almost no Good Guys

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Set in Tudor England, this is the story of Matthew Shardlake, a servant of Thomas Cromwell, who is sent to a monastery on the coast to investigate the murder of the commissioner. The bigger job is getting the monastery to "surrender," to force it to close and have the monks leave with a small pension. This occurred just after Anne Boleyn was put to death on the false, tortured testimony of her supposed lovers, when all the rich monasteries were being closed. (In real life, the story of false confessions is likely true; in the novel, it is absolutely true.) At this time, the Church of England was newly pre-eminent; "papists" were oppressed; and the monasteries were the enemies of the state, mainly because they had a lot of money that Cromwell and his cronies wanted for themselves.

Shardlake is an interesting but not entirely likable protagonist. I like him better by the end, but he's arrogant and moralistic, a bit of a hypocrite, and not as effective as I'd like him to be. But he's pretty sharp, and he's reasonably active despite being physically limited. Most of the minor characters, including those in London, all the monks and their servants in the monastery, and the locals, are varying degrees of obnoxious and unlikable, too, especially Cromwell. The doctor (spoiler? sorta; hardly) is a good guy, and he's the only one I can think of that isn't disappointing. But I guess that's all part of the theme. The dissolution of the monasteries, their destruction and selling off for parts, mirrors what Shardlake sees in the world at large. Everything falls apart. No one, no institution, is as good as it pretends to be. The world is darkness and deception; the church is self-serving; the court is evil.

He learns a lot in this story.

It's a good mystery, though it falters in the long middle section, which I wouldn't have minded being about 75 pages shorter, tbh. It is quite entertaining overall, though, and the threads are tied up enough to satisfy by the end. I want to see how Shardlake progresses after this, if he's less naive and less hypocritical, if he keeps his distance from Cromwell, so I'm gonna ago find the sequel. I expect to like it.

Recommended for historical mystery readers.

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