Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of Heartstone by C. J. Sansom

Heartstone by C. J. Sansom

Heartstone

A Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery #5

by C. J. Sansom

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • Published:
  • Jan 2011, 640 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

Summer, 1545. England is at war, and Matthew Shardlake is about to encounter the most politically dangerous case of his career. While a massive French fleet prepares to attack, every able-bodied man is being pressed into military service. Meanwhile, an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr asks Shardlake to investigate claims of "monstrous wrongs" committed against a young ward of the court. Shardlake's inquiries take him and his loyal assistant, Jack Barak, to Hoyland Priory and Portsmouth, where the English fleet is gathering. There they uncover a startling link between the ward and a woman incarcerated in Bedlam.

With a fantastic backdrop of wartime intrigue and a dramatic finale on board one of Henry VIII's great warships, Heartstone is certain to catapult this internationally bestselling series to greater prominence.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Strong prose makes Tudor England instantly accessible, and the clockwork plotting sustains deep interest throughout." - Publishers Weekly

"Enjoyable for mystery, thriller, and historical fiction readers, this is also recommended to fans of all things Tudor." - Library Journal

"Engrossing." - The Spectator (UK)

"Atmospheric and erudite ... Not since Umberto Eco penned The Name of the Rose has a historical crime novelist captured so perfectly a people and their place, and harnessed them with such intelligence and credibility to shadowy tales of politics, misdeeds, murder and mystery." - Lancashire Evening Post (UK)

"An enthralling historical crime novel packed with details of life in Tudor England. Highly recommended." - Irish Independent

"Compulsively readable and highly satisfying. ... An entirely engrossing novel with an intriguing twist." - Daily Express (UK)

This information about Heartstone was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Mike Foster

21 hours and 100 chapeters for penance
If you sinned greatly in a previous life and need to make amends then this could be approrpaite penance. I'm visually impaired and the idea of wading through 21 hours for a crime novel turned me off. I didnt read it and the people in the book club who did found it turgid at best. Forget arty farty media reviewers as this may be histororically well detailed but the author is not a storyteller. Try Mistress of the Dark Art of Deat by Anna Franklin or books by other authors if you want a proper historical crime novel.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

C. J. Sansom Author Biography

C. J. Sansom was educated at the University of Birmingham, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he decided to retrain as a solicitor (lawyer). He practiced for a while in Sussex as a lawyer for the disadvantaged, then he quit in order to work full-time as a writer. C.J. Sansom is the #1 bestselling author of the Matthew Shardlake series of historical thrillers. He died at the age of 71.

Dark Fire won the 2005 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger and Sansom was "Very Highly Commended" in the 2007 CWA Dagger in the Library award, for the Shardlake series.

The BBC have commissioned an adaptation of Dissolution with the actor Kenneth Branagh set to star as Shardlake. The rest of the Shardlake books are expected to follow....

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to C. J. Sansom's Website

Other books by C. J. Sansom at BookBrowse
  • Winter In Madrid jacket
  • Revelation jacket

6 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more historical fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

A few books well chosen, and well made use of, will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.