Sansom, who is himself a lawyer, has won praise in England for his microscopic knowledge of 16th-century life. Catherine asks the lawyer to investigate the apparent suicide of the son of one of her former housekeepers.

The other is Queen Catherine Parr, who had been his friend before she had the dubious honor of becoming the last of Henry VIII's six, mostly ill-starred wives. The first, Ellen, has long been confined in Bedlam, the madhouse, under mysterious circumstances Shardlake is determined to help her if he can. Early in the novel, Shardlake visits two women whose needs set the story in motion. He's also a hunchback, a widower and exceedingly trouble-prone. The lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, is 43 years old during this story, which is set in the summer of 1545. Sansom's series about an idealistic lawyer who seeks justice in a violent age, mid-16th-century England. The first, reviewed here recently, was Peter James's perverse tale of sexual obsession and expensive shoes, ' Dead Like You.' Now we have ' Heartstone,' the fifth book in C.J.

But now I've devoured two in one month, both by British writers I'd not read before. I count myself lucky if I stumble upon two or three a year. Good, solid, enjoyable novels are blessedly common, but exceptional, knock-your-socks-off novels are rare. Events will converge on board one of the King's great warships, primed for battle in Portsmouth harbour. 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.

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 Fettiplace, a young woman incarcerated in the Bedlam. 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. As the English fleet gathers at Portsmouth, the country raises the largest militia army it has ever seen. Henry VIII's invasion of France has gone badly wrong, and a massive French fleet is preparing to sail across the Channel. Sansom's fifith spellbinding mystery inthe Shardlake series.Summer, 1545.

Heartstone cj sansom summary