Why a Booktrail?
1546 – King Henry VIII is dying and the protestants and Catholics are fighting for control of his successor. A missing book written by Catherine Parr could cause history to come crashing down.
Lamentation (Shardlake 6)
What you need to know before your trail
King Henry VIII is dying and there is a bitter struggle going on behind the scenes and in the corridors of power as to who will control the government of his successor. Never before has the battle between Protestants and Catholics been so fierce.
Anyone talking of religion could be burned at the stake. So when Catherine Parr, Henry’s latest wife reveals she has written her thoughts down in a book, now missing, Matthew Shardlake is brought into track it down. And fast for the book could end up in the wrong hands.
A page of the book has been found in the hands of a murdered London printer. As Shardlake starts on the trail of the missing manuscript he has to keep it a guarded secret due to his loyalty to the Queen.
But a mission as dangerous as this one could prove deadly even for Shardlake and its answer lies deep at the heart of the palace itself.
Travel Guide
Summer, 1546.
Oh the world of the Tudor court is a dark and dangerous one. King Henry is slowly and painfully dying and the atmosphere is as tense as it’s ever been. The fight and struggle between the two religious sides are at their most vicious and so the very thought that a book Lamentation of a Sinner extolling the virtues of Protestantism written by Henry’s sixth wife herself could well be the spark that lights the final fire.
All around London, heretics are being burned at the stake, Anne Askew being one of them. Shardlake is called into help due to his close friendship with the Queen. Her secret calls him to lie, cheat and beg his way around London’s dark and dangerous underworld in order to find this book. Stolen from the locked chamber in the Queen’s bedroom, the consequences of this crime are far reaching.
Nowhere and no one is safe as London’s streets, the shadowy corridors of the royal palaces and the backstreet printers show a world in hiding, people trying to make a living in a world where talk could prove deadly and suspicion is a constant cloud above your head. What a world! In the light of flickering candles, you can smell death in the air, hear whispers all around you and feel the fear on the back of your neck. Who can you trust and who should you trust?
This book takes you right to the heart of the Tudor world, the fear, risk of saying something you shouldn’t, the backstabbing, the religious persecution and raw detailed descriptions of death and burning at the stake immerse you in a world and real historical characters who weave a very complex and fascinating web of life at court and in the backstreets of 16th C London.
Streetview Maps
1) Chancery Lane
Shardlake lives here
Shardlake lives here
5) Tower of London
The place of fear in Tudor England
The place of fear in Tudor England
Booktrailer Review
Susan @thebooktrailer
Why do I love Shardlake? The setting is as immersive as you can get that’s for sure and the character himself is intriguing – a hunchback lawyer whose story is as interesting as the cases he appears in. A Columbo of his day if you like, as he gets his man and some intriguing answers with methods and words you would not expect. Sometimes which even he doesn’t which is part of his charm.
The fact these stories are based either on true fact or real figures and historical events are fascinating in the extreme and it really is a case of bringing these people to life and imaging what they thought, said and felt. The book was packed full of tension, emotions and I swear the book was that evocative I could even smell the faint oder of smoke on its pages. Although this could have been due to the fact I read sections of it sat by an open fire but I’m sure it was the book on its own which had this power.
There are several mysteries in this book – not just the missing manuscript and the world of printing in the 16th century was intriguing. Having Henry VIII and his sweating, lumbering figure menacing his way across various scenes really highlighted the complex and risky world that the Tudor era was.
Brilliant as it reads like an epic movie with candlelight, fires burning and the smell of impeding doom permeating each and every page.
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