Totally Absorbing - Rated 
Having only read the first book of the Shardlake series (which was good), I decided to dive into this one on a whim, and I'm glad I did. The story of a Tudor serial killer is a hundred times more terrifying than a modern-day one as crimes were so easy to get away with then, and that is something the author plays on right until the very end. While this is an exciting read, it is also an informative one. However, although Sansom is undoubtedly a great historian, it is difficult to know how much of the action is actually true to life, and so you just have to take his word for it. The detailed descriptions of a grim, filthy Tudor London are fascinating and really carry the story along. Very long but highly recommended.
Preposterous plot, but excellent book - Rated
It is a truism that all authors operating in the historical crime genre will eventually write a story involving sewers. This is Sansom's. In fairness it must get progressively more difficult to think of plots in each of the volumes in a series of such novels. The author solves his dilemma by throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the fourth Shardlake book. However, he can write and has a grasp of period detail which is plenty convincing enough to carry lay readers along. This reader at least therefore was carried along strongly enough with the flow to overlook the extremely unlikely route we were taking.
Excellent Tudor Mystery - Rated
What an excellent Tudor mystery - Sansom really brings Tudor life 'back to life'! If you enjoy grizzly murder mysteries with twists and turns then this is for you. It is well up to the standard of the previous 3 Shardlake novels and we can only hope the fourth one will not be too long in arriving! Read and enjoy - one to immerse onself in on a cold winter night!
Gripping! - Rated
Absolutely gripping, kept me guessing right up to the end.
The style was absorbing and it gave the sense that you in the midst of the group as the events unfolded.
A brilliant book - I hope this is not the end of Serjeant Shardlake!
Buy it and get stuck in.
Not quite a revelation... - Rated 
In this latest Matthew Shardlake novel, the sights, sounds and smells of Tudor London ring as true as ever, and the struggle between religious reformers and conservatives is persuasively drawn. Unfortunately, the main plot (serial killer on the loose) is irritatingly predictable. Even a semi-comatose reader will have worked out the connection between killings before Shardlake, and from then on it's a plodding murder-by-numbers until the damp squib of a conclusion.
Perhaps the weakness of the plot would have been less obvious if the characters had been better developed. The coroner's main role sees to be to declare every thirty pages that the killer is possessed by the devil, while even Barak, a lively and resourceful presence in earlier novels, spends most of his time getting drunk and squabbling with his wife.
The scenes at Lincoln's Inn and Bedlam are well handled, but overall there is a lack of ingenuity and no real plot twists. I'm hoping Shardlake's next outing will be more inspired.
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