Heartstone by C.J. Sansom was first published in 2010 and it’s the fifth book in the Matthew Shardlake series.

It’s June 1545 and the setting is London, then Portsmouth. Henry VIII is now married to Catherine Parr and he’s not long for this world. He has put on even more weight and his leg ulcers are getting worse, but that hasn’t stopped him from starting a war with France. The road to Portsmouth is packed with soldiers, a massive English army to take on the French. Shardlake and Barak are heading that way too.

Shardlake is determined to get to the bottom of why a woman called Ellen is a patient in Bedlam, she’s terrified of the outside world and has been in Bedlam for over 20 years, but who is paying her fees and why was she put there in the first place?

This is a great read which really gets into the nitty gritty of what life must have been like for the soldiers and sailors who had often unwillingly been pressed into service of the King. In no time anyone travelling within the multitude is infested with fleas and lice. This is the time when the ship the Mary Rose sank so disastrously and it features in the story.

I have quite a lot of faith in C.J. Sansom’s historical details, but he did slip up with his knowledge of hunting when he wrote about servants gutting deer after a hunt. It wasn’t done quickly enough so the meat would have been inedible as deer have to be ‘gralloched’ (disembowelled) as soon as they are killed. But that’s me nit-picking

Heartstone is 715 pages long, which can be a bit off-putting especially when you have  a lot of books waiting to be read, but in no time you can read 100 pages and not realise it. I think that’s proof of how well written this series is.