Sansom makes academic accounts of 1549 commoners rebellion against the enclosure of common land by landowners accessible. A narrative built around the gruesome murder of Edith Boleyn (a distant relation of Lady Elizabeth) and its investigation into the facts by Matthew Shardlake, a London layer, gets intertwined with this historic event when Shardlake finds himself taken by the rebels into their camp outside of Norwich and finds himself sympathising with their cause whilst seemingly a figure of opposition given his class position. ( )

Seventh in the historical mystery series featuring the hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake. After the death of Henry VIII he’s now working for Lady Elizabeth in a mainly conveyancing role but she has a different job in mind for him when Shardlake is sent to Norwich to investigate the accusation of murder by a distant relative in the Boleyn line. But the investigation is forced to take a back seat when Matthew & his assistant Nicholas (along with Jack Barak who is there for the assizes) are swept up in Kett’s rebellion.

A little overlong but otherwise another fine instalment in the series. Perhaps not hitting the heights of some of the others but offers up an insight into an often overlooked part of English history ( )

Ah, Matthew. Not my Matthew, but Matthew Shardlake, the hunchback lawyer during the Tudor period in England. This is C.J. Sansom's last Shardlake novel, so I read it with a heavy heart to begin with. Turn out I needed a heavy heart throughout the entire 900 page novel. As always there is a mystery involving a distant relative of Anne "Beheaded" Boleyn, but 80% of the novel (the whole middle part) deals with Kett's Rebellion, a farmers' rebellion in Norfolk (Tombland to be exact) against the upper classes. I was fascinated by the history, but after weeks of living in the camp at Mousehold Keep, I was tired. Maybe that's what Sansom wanted--for me to be as exhausted as the farmers. Of all of his Shardlake novels, this was my least favorite (sorry, C.J.). I think he was trying to write a magnum opus as his last work, but he went overboard. The mystery sandwiched the pages and seemed quite rushed at the end. ( )

Although I devoured all the previous books in this series, the length of this one made me postpone reading it for a couple of years. So often of late it seems that successful authors become self-indulgent, extending and expanding their stories in ways that really don't make them any better, just longer. Perhaps their editors are cowed by the authors' previous successes and disinclined to suggest that shorter can be better?

Would that be the case with Tombland? Any series reader should go into this volume with a baseline anticipation of the rich details of religion, life and politics in the 16th century that underlie all the Shardlake books. But although each previous book was longer than the one before, none came close to 880 pages!

As it happens, in this book Sansom's goal is not only to write an intriguing mystery in a distinctive setting, but to share with readers his interpretation of the Robert Kett Rebellion of 1549. Not as well known as Wat Tyler's rebellion of 1381, in recent decades the events and causes of this uprising have been explored in new detail, much of which Sansom works into his story. In his typical fashion (fans of the series might be put in mind of the royal progress to York in [b:Sovereign|138684|Sovereign (Matthew Shardlake, #3)|C.J. Sansom|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440215651l/138684._SY75_.jpg|1698960]) he imagines what daily life in the camp of thousands of impoverished and indignant rebels outside of Norwich might have been like. All this is rooted in meticulous research, which he recounts for us in an extended essay that follows the end of the book.

I'm happy to report that although I continuously assessed, as I read, whether the book could have been as good had this-or-that section been deleted, the answer was always "no". The interplay of characters and events was so complete that eliminating any would have diminished the texture or the plot - or both. Sansom also does a masterful job of integrating characters who remained in London with the events in Norwich; little detail, but occasional communications that, whether or not they were successful, kept the connections intact. Most importantly, the story continually moved forward, paralleling the real life events of that summer.

The story also resonated with me as a comparison with the contemporary American culture and economy. There are still so many reasons for those at the bottom of the ladder to cry foul. True, the parallels aren't exact. The yeoman class, situated between the landless laborers and the gentry, was actually growing during Tudor times, where our middle class is now stagnant. But the most affluent among us increase in wealth, often with the government's assistance, and the numbers of the poor have become even greater during the pandemic.

Oh, by the way, despite the fact that the murder mystery takes a back seat to the rebellion in [b:Tombland|40095725|Tombland (Matthew Shardlake, #7)|C.J. Sansom|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526558444l/40095725._SY75_.jpg|62146274], it's still a worthy tale, replete with suspects and motivations. As always, Steven Crossley provides excellent narration. ( )