[Originally: https://wmconnolley.livejournal.com/29849.html]
Continuing the series. You can read the wiki article because it has its fanz. Though it has a notability tag, so may disappear, so here's the cite.
Quick summary: interesting, fun, absorbing.
Why I read it: I'd read Revelation and Dark Fire, from the same series.
The book is one of a series, set in the time of Henry VIII, following the lawyer Matthew Shardlake as he gets involved in various matters of state. They become crime whodunnits, as a series of people get murdered. Manfred said that "his plots are absurd, but he gets a sense of Tudor England". This one doesn't have major errors (unlike Revelation) but (although I don't know Tudor England) I rather feel that the characters behave anachronistically. The plot backbone is Henry VIII making a grand Progress up to York to receive its submission, and Shardlake sent there to deal with legal matters and look after a prisoner who is to be tortured in London. A trail of deaths ensues, triggered by papers relating to the King's illegitimacy.
What works well is the swirl of politics around Henry's visit (the York folk don't like him, there is a lot of sympathy for the suppressed rebellion (Pilgrimage of Grace) of five years back, discussions of past kings, people's reactions to the King. The way lawyerly business mixes in. Also the way authority works - patronage from the King, the Archbishop, the Council of the North, and so on. The trail of death is mysterious - if its technically a whodunnit, I'm not at all sure you could plausibly have been expected to guess the who, though that there were two separate threads was guessable.
I read this in about four days (its long) and finished past midnight.
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