The Grotesque: Shardlake isn't particularly deformed but you wouldn't know it by the way some of the people around him treat him.Full-Circle Revolution: Shardlake can see the English Reformation turning into this - replacing a Corrupt Church with an Evil Aristocracy won't improve the lot of the common man at all.Dirty Old Monk: Being a good-looking young woman (or a good-looking young man) at Scarnsea Abbey can get you the wrong kind of attention.Combined with Death by Materialism, as Shardlake is convinced their ill-gotten gains spoiled their balance. Disney Villain Death: Following the Climbing Climax of Dissolution, the villain falls to the church floor.Desolation Shot: The last chapter of Dissolution has Shardlake return to Scarnsea Abbey after it's been been shut down and the demolition gangs have started work.Deliberate Values Dissonance: Shardlake shares the era's prejudice against 'sodomites', and uses the term interchangeably with ' pederast'.Climbing Climax: At the climax of Dissolution, Shardlake pursues his suspect up the monastery bell tower.

The Shardlake series provides examples of: Shardlake works on commission initially from Thomas Cromwell in Dissolution and Dark Fire, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in Sovereign and Revelation, Queen Catherine Parr in Heartstone and Lamentation, and the future Elizabeth I in Tombland. The series' main character is the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake, who is assisted in his adventures by a series of 'assistants': his legal clerk Mark Poer (Dissolution), Former street urchin and Cromwellian Fixer Jack Barak (Dark Fire - Tombland), and the young minor nobleman/law student Nicholas Overton (Lamentation - Tombland). Sansom set in the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century.

The Shardlake series is a series of historical mystery novels by C.

Dissolution shardlake