Heartstone

Mystery novels have a sub-genre known as historical mysteries, set in almost every time period you can think of. Author C.J. Sansom has a series set in Tudor England, featuring a hunchbacked and altruistic lawyer named Matthew Shardlake. His latest in the series is Heartstone, which, like many such mysteries, has an abundance of research that sometimes overwhelms the plot.

The year is 1545, and Henry VIII, now in his last years of rule, threatens war against the French, who sent an invasion fleet toward Portsmouth. During this tension Shardlake is called in by the Queen (Catherine Parr, the last of Henry's six wives) to take a case concerning her former lady-in-waiting's son. The man was a tutor to a pair of children who became orphans, and then became wards to a landowner. The tutor hung himself, and Shardlake and his clerk, Jack Barack, try to get to the bottom of it.

As usual in mysteries, there is a second plot, this time involving a woman Shardlake visits in Bedlam, the insane asylum. He wonders how she got there in the first place, and finding no commitment papers, tries to get to the bottom of that, too. Also as usual, the two cases will be connected.

Shardlake, though hundreds of years older than most sleuths, has many of the same attributes. Aside from being a hunchback, he is also a classic do-gooder, working for the Court of Requests, almost always representing plaintiffs against landowners. In this book he takes on the Court of Wards, which apparently was notoriously corrupt. He says of himself, "When we get back it is time I made a life for myself, instead of living through other people's tragedies. I realized that was what I had been doing for years: there had been so many, brought by the wild changes and conflicts the King had forced on England, perhaps it was my response to the wider madness."

Sansom, in this book at least, is no friend of Henry's. In the afterword he calls Henry's campaign against the French his worst diplomatic mistake. But it allows Shardlake to see first hand the battle around the Isle of Wight, and Sansom has managed to put his lawyer aboard the ill-fated Mary Rose, which was sunk by the French. The passages involving the sinking and Shardlake's rescue are well done and exciting.

It also is instructive to find out how difficult basic things were to people in those days, especially travel. Shardlake and is opposing lawyer, Dyrick, must travel to take depositions, and even while traveling with soldiers, it takes them a week in what would today take a few hours. It is here that some details overwhelm Sansom's prose: "You may have noticed some soldiers have buttons on their shirts, while others tie them with anglets. Sir Franklin believes only gentlemen should be allowed to wear buttons. It is, shall we say, something of an obsession." And it may be interesting to those who follow the history of military uniforms, but is simply superfluous here.

But though Heartstone (the title refers to a hunting term--the piece of bone that is closest to a deer's heart and is taken as trophy by the hunter whose shot brings it down)  is an overly long novel (over 600 pages) I finally came around to enjoying it, and did not figure out the central mystery. Sansom's prose is effortless and I felt the stink and heat of Tudor England. Anyone with an abiding interest in that time period would enjoy this book and probably the others in the series, which I have not read.