Dissolution

In the winter of 1537, Thomas Cromwell's campaign to dissolve England's monasteries hits a wall when his commissioner is found beheaded inside the wealthy Sussex monastery of Scarnsea. Cromwell dispatches Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked lawyer and committed reformer, to investigate. What Shardlake finds is a community of monks who resent the crown, guard old secrets, and may be hiding more than one murderer. As the snow piles up and the killings continue, Shardlake's faith in the reform cause and in his own powers of reason both begin to crack. Sansom's debut launched a series and reframed Reformation England as a place where conscience and survival rarely point the same direction.